Ansible – Replace values in a dictionary by looping through another dictionary

I have two dictionaries as below

"fictional_characters": {
   "male": [
      "Donkey",
      "Humpty",
      "Piranha"
   ],
   "female": [
      "Fiona",
      "Kitty_Softpaws",
      "Diane_Foxington"
   ]
}

And

"movie_names": {
   "Donkey": "Shrek",
   "Humpty": "Puss_in_Boots",
   "Piranha": "The_Bad_Guys",
   "Fiona": "Shrek",
   "Kitty_Softpaws": "Puss_in_Boots",
   "Diane_Foxingtin": "The_Bad_Guys"
}

I would like to change the dictionary values in "fictional_characters" to the values in "movie_names", e.g.

"fictional_characters": {
   "male": [
      "Shrek",
      "Puss_in_Boots",
      "The_Bad_Guys"
   ],
   "female": [
      "Shrek",
      "Puss_in_Boots",
      "The_Bad_Guys"
   ]
}

I started by converting the "fictional_characters" dictionary into a list

- name: Convert fictional_characters to a list
  set_fact:
    fictional_characters_list: "{{fictional_characters | dict2items }}"

That gave me

"fictional_characters_list": [
  {
    "key": "male",
    "value": [
      "Donkey",
      "Humpty",
      "Piranha"
    ],
  },
    "key": "female",
    "value": [
      "Fiona",
      "Kitty_Softpaws",
      "Diane_Foxington"
    ]
  }
]

Next, some Jinja

- name: Using Jinja to swap dict values
  set_fact:
    fict_char_movies: |
      {% for e in fictional_characters_list %}
      {{ e.key }}:
      {% for char in e.value %}
      {% if char in movie_names %}
        - {{ movie_names[char]|split(',') %}
      {% endif %}
      {% endfor %}
      {% endfor %}

- name: Print the result
  debug:
    msg: "{{ fict_char_movies | from_yaml }}"

the above returns the following result

"male": [
  [
    "Shrek"
  ],
  [
    "Puss_in_Boots"
  ],
  [
    "The_Bad_Guys"
  ],
"female": [
  [
    "Shrek"
  ],
  [
    "Puss_in_Boots"
  ],
  [
    "The_Bad_Guys"
  ]
]

How do I get rid of this nested list so that I get the below structure ?

"fictional_characters": {
   "male": [
      "Shrek",
      "Puss_in_Boots",
      "The_Bad_Guys"
   ],
   "female": [
      "Shrek",
      "Puss_in_Boots",
      "The_Bad_Guys"
   ]
}

>Solution :

The declarations below

  fict_char_movies_str: |
    {% for k,v in fictional_characters.items() %}
    {{ k }}:
    {% for char in v %}
    {% if char in movie_names %}
      - {{ movie_names[char] }}
    {% endif %}
    {% endfor %}
    {% endfor %}
  fict_char_movies: "{{ fict_char_movies_str|from_yaml }}"

The template can be simplified

    fict_char_movies_str: |
      {% for k,v in fictional_characters.items() %}
      {{ k }}:
        {{ v|map('extract', movie_names) }}
      {% endfor %}

give what you want

  fict_char_movies:
    female:
    - Shrek
    - Puss_in_Boots
    - The_Bad_Guys
    male:
    - Shrek
    - Puss_in_Boots
    - The_Bad_Guys

Example of a complete playbook for testing

- hosts: localhost

  vars:

    fictional_characters:
      female:
      - Fiona
      - Kitty_Softpaws
      - Diane_Foxington
      male:
      - Donkey
      - Humpty
      - Piranha

    movie_names:
      Diane_Foxington: The_Bad_Guys
      Donkey: Shrek
      Fiona: Shrek
      Humpty: Puss_in_Boots
      Kitty_Softpaws: Puss_in_Boots
      Piranha: The_Bad_Guys

    fict_char_movies_str: |
      {% for k,v in fictional_characters.items() %}
      {{ k }}:
      {% for char in v %}
      {% if char in movie_names %}
        - {{ movie_names[char] }}
      {% endif %}
      {% endfor %}
      {% endfor %}
    fict_char_movies: "{{ fict_char_movies_str|from_yaml }}"

  tasks:

    - debug:
        var: fict_char_movies