Ansible panos_facts Config Sub Set

[ngutierrez31]

Good afternoon team,

I need to obtain values such as the Panorama server IP from a firewall to accomplish a project using Ansible and the paloaltonetworks.panos 2.2.0 collection. The panos_facts module with the config subset specified outputs what appears to be xml. What was this outputs intended use?  Was it intended to be parsed for registering variables or are we supposed to use the panos_op module to grab any parts of the config we require for variables?  I can find no examples of using this output realistically.   There are of course many ways to skin the cat so I'm just wondering if anyone is using the panos_facts/gather_subset: config output to do the job?

-  panos_facts:
     provider: '{{ provider }}'
     gather_subset: ['config']
   register: panfacts_config

Thanks all,

Nicolas

[ngutierrez31 · Accepted solution]

Circling back here. The panos_op module can be a bad time in trying to parse the output for the variable you want. What I ended up doing was gathering the facts with the panos_facts config subset and then parsing the xml for the info I needed. Find an example below.

- name: copy panfacts into a file
  template:
   src: /etc/ansible/cp_sucks_prod/palo_show_role/templates/panfacts.j2
   dest: /etc/ansible/cp_sucks_prod/palo_show_role/templates/cp_sucks_prod_panfacts.xml

- name: Get panorama IP from the xml output
  community.general.xml:
   path: /etc/ansible/cp_sucks_prod/palo_show_role/templates/cp_sucks_prod_panfacts.xml
   xpath: /config/devices/entry[@name='localhost.localdomain']/deviceconfig/system/panorama-server
   content: text
  register: panorama_server_var

- name: print panorama var parsed from xml
  debug: var=item.value
  loop: "{{panorama_server_var.matches.0|dict2items}}"

- name: set Panorama IP address variable.
  set_fact:
    panorama_IP: "{{item.value}}"
  loop: "{{panorama_server_var.matches.0|dict2items}}"