Ansible flatten/merge dict but not fully - dictionary

Question

I have the following dict
dict3: [[[{"x": "1","y": "2"},{"z": 3,"h": 4}],{"w": 5}],[[{"x": "333","y": "444"},{"z": "555","h": "777"}],{"w": "999"}]]
I need to make it like this:
dict": [
{
"x": "1",
"y": "2",
"z": "3",
"h": "4"
"w": 5
}
{
"x": "333",
"y": "444"
"z": 555,
"h": 777
"w": 999
}
]
The following command flattens it fully, which I don't want and also does not merge x,y,z,h and w (for each group - there can be many grups).
- name: "'unnest' all elements into single list"
ansible.builtin.debug:
msg: "all in one list {{lookup('community.general.flattened', dict)}}"
This is the result with full flattening (and also not merging):
"_raw_params": [
{
"x": "1",
"y": "2"
},
{
"h": 4,
"z": 3
},
{
"w": 5
},
{
"x": "333",
"y": "444"
},
{
"h": "777",
"z": "555"
},
{
"w": "999"
}
]
BTW here is the code
- hosts: localhost
gather_facts: false
vars:
dict: [[[{"x": "1","y": "2"},{"z": 3,"h": 4}],{"w": 5}],[[{"x": "333","y": "444"},{"z": "555","h": "777"}],{"w": "999"}]]
tasks:
- name: UNNEST
set_fact:
"{{lookup('community.general.flattened',dict)}}"
Is there a way to do this?
Thanks!

Answer 1

What you want to do is:
flatten individually each element of your top list. You then get a list of lists of dicts
combine individually each element (i.e. the dict lists) from the above result to merge every dicts into a single one.
All of the above is done by applying the corresponding filters to the elements of the top list using the map filter
The following example playbook:
---
- hosts: localhost
gather_facts: false
vars:
dict3: [[[{"x": "1","y": "2"},{"z": 3,"h": 4}],{"w": 5}],[[{"x": "333","y": "444"},{"z": "555","h": "777"}],{"w": "999"}]]
tasks:
- debug:
msg: "{{ dict3 | map('flatten') | map('combine') }}"
Gives:
PLAY [localhost] ***********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
TASK [debug] ***************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
"msg": [
{
"h": 4,
"w": 5,
"x": "1",
"y": "2",
"z": 3
},
{
"h": "777",
"w": "999",
"x": "333",
"y": "444",
"z": "555"
}
]
}
PLAY RECAP *****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
localhost : ok=1 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0