state=absent should succeed even if a required related resource is not found

[cdenney-silex]

Please confirm the following

• I agree to follow this project's code of conduct.
• I have checked the current issues for duplicates.
• I understand that AWX is open source software provided for free and that I might not receive a timely response.
• I am NOT reporting a (potential) security vulnerability. (These should be emailed to security@ansible.com instead.)

Bug Summary

When using state=absent, modules should succeed even if a required resource was not found.

Examples include:
credentials with missing credential_type
credential_input_sources with missing target_credentials

If a resource dependency is missing for a target resource and state=present, then the modules should fail since the dependencies must be created first. However, if those dependencies are missing and the state=absent, then the modules should succeed since the target resource should not exist without its dependencies.

AWX version

AAP 2.6

Select the relevant components

• UI
• UI (tech preview)
• API
• Docs
• Collection
• CLI
• Other

Installation method

openshift

Modifications

no

Ansible version

2.16

Operating system

RHEL 9

Web browser

No response

Steps to reproduce

---
    - ansible.controller.credential:
        name: foo
        credential_type: bar
        state: absent
      ignore_errors: true
     
    - ansible.controller.credential_input_source:
        target_credential: foo
        input_field_name: bar
        state: absent
      ignore_errors: true

Expected results

Module should pass.

Actual results

TASK [ansible.controller.credential] *************************************************************************************************************************************************
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => 
    changed: false
    msg: Request to /api/controller/v2/credential_types/?name=bar returned 0 items, expected
      1
    query:
      name: bar
    response:
      json:
        count: 0
        next: null
        previous: null
        results: []
      status_code: 200
    total_results: 0
...ignoring

TASK [ansible.controller.credential_input_source] ************************************************************************************************************************************
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => 
    changed: false
    msg: Request to /api/controller/v2/credentials/?name=foo returned 0 items, expected
      1
    query:
      name: foo
    response:
      json:
        count: 0
        next: null
        previous: null
        results: []
      status_code: 200
    total_results: 0
...ignoring

Additional information

This stems from the use of resolve_name_to_id() and its use of get_exactly_one(), which doesn't allow none. A proposal for resolution is to add allow_none=false as a default parameter to resolve_name_to_id() then pass it to get_one() instead of get_exactly_one(). Then add logic to the modules that need it to override allow_none=true and exit the module successfully when none.

[thedoubl3j]

@cdenney-silex thanks for the issue, if this issue lies within AAP and you are using AAP, could you please open a support ticket via access.redhat.com?

Judging by how these are found in the controller modules, if you are able to reproduce this with the awx collection, that would be a valid issue for this repo and we can triage it.

[cdenney-silex]

This is a valid replicable issue here as described in the Additional Information section and affects ansible.controller downstream as a result.

Root of the issue lies in where resolve_name_to_id() is used and how that function behaves; examples:

• https://github.com/ansible/awx/blob/devel/awx_collection/plugins/modules/credential.py#L248
• https://github.com/ansible/awx/blob/devel/awx_collection/plugins/modules/credential_input_source.py#L96

These modules will fail regardless of what state is requested if those lines do not return exactly 1 result. None should be allowed instead, and fail only if state is not set to absent. There may be other modules with similar problems.

[cdenney-silex]

These could probably be fixed similarly to how inventory_sources have been addressed in code:

https://github.com/ansible/awx/blob/devel/awx_collection/plugins/modules/inventory_source.py#L227-L237