dconf: three minor but useful fixes

changelogs/fragments/6206-dconf-booleans.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+minor_changes:
+ - "dconf - be forgiving about boolean values: convert them to GVariant booleans automatically (https:/ansible-collections/community.general/pull/6206)."

plugins/modules/dconf.py

@@ -70,13 +70,18 @@
  description:
  - A dconf key to modify or read from the dconf database.
  value:
- type: str
+ type: raw
  required: false
  description:
  - Value to set for the specified dconf key. Value should be specified in
  GVariant format. Due to complexity of this format, it is best to have a
  look at existing values in the dconf database.
  - Required for I(state=present).
+ - Although the type is specified as "raw", it should typically be
+ specified as a string. However, boolean values in particular are
+ handled properly even when specified as booleans rather than strings
+ (in fact, handling booleans properly is why the type of this parameter
+ is "raw").
  state:
  type: str
  required: false
@@ -155,6 +160,7 @@
  HAS_PSUTIL = False
 
 from ansible.module_utils.basic import AnsibleModule, missing_required_lib
+from ansible.module_utils.common.text.converters import to_native
 
 
 class DBusWrapper(object):
@@ -288,6 +294,10 @@ def variants_are_equal(canonical_value, user_value):
 
  Returns True if the two values are equal.
  """
+ if canonical_value is None:
+ # It's unset in dconf database, so anything the user is trying to
+ # set is a change.
+ return False
  try:
  variant1 = Variant.parse(None, canonical_value)
  variant2 = Variant.parse(variant1.get_type(), user_value)
@@ -349,7 +359,7 @@ def write(self, key, value):
  rc, out, err = dbus_wrapper.run_command(command)
 
  if rc != 0:
- self.module.fail_json(msg='dconf failed while write the value with error: %s' % err,
+ self.module.fail_json(msg='dconf failed while writing key %s, value %s with error: %s' % (key, value, err),
  out=out,
  err=err)
 
@@ -401,11 +411,24 @@ def main():
  argument_spec=dict(
  state=dict(default='present', choices=['present', 'absent', 'read']),
  key=dict(required=True, type='str', no_log=False),
- value=dict(required=False, default=None, type='str'),
+ # Converted to str below after special handling of bool.
+ value=dict(required=False, default=None, type='raw'),
  ),
  supports_check_mode=True
  )
 
+ # Try to be forgiving about the user specifying a boolean as the value, or
+ # more accurately about the fact that YAML and Ansible are quite insistent
+ # about converting strings that look like booleans into booleans. Convert
+ # the boolean into a string of the type dconf will understand. Any type for
+ # the value other than boolean is just converted into a string directly.
+ if module.params['value'] is not None:
+ if isinstance(module.params['value'], bool):
+ module.params['value'] = 'true' if module.params['value'] else 'false'
+ else:
+ module.params['value'] = to_native(
+ module.params['value'], errors='surrogate_or_strict')
+
  if Variant is None:
  module.warn(
  'WARNING: The gi.repository Python library is not available; '