Plays and tasks now yell when they see parameters they do not understand, so that typos like 'var' for 'vars'

don't result in people having to ask questions about what is wrong with their playbook

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -30,6 +30,7 @@ Ansible Changes By Release
 * ec2 inventory script
 * mount module
 * apt module now passes DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
+* to catch typos, like 'var' for 'vars', playbooks and tasks now yell on invalid parameters
 
 0.5 "Amsterdam" ------- July 04, 2012
 

lib/ansible/playbook/play.py

@@ -32,11 +32,23 @@ class Play(object):
        'tags', 'gather_facts', '_ds', '_handlers', '_tasks'
     ]
 
+    # to catch typos and so forth -- these are userland names
+    # and don't line up 1:1 with how they are stored
+    VALID_KEYS = [
+       'hosts', 'name', 'vars', 'vars_prompt', 'vars_files',
+       'tasks', 'handlers', 'user', 'port', 'include',
+       'sudo', 'sudo_user', 'connection', 'tags', 'gather_facts'
+    ]
+
     # *************************************************
 
     def __init__(self, playbook, ds):
         ''' constructor loads from a play datastructure '''
 
+        for x in ds.keys():
+             if not x in Play.VALID_KEYS:
+                 raise errors.AnsibleError("%s is not a legal parameter in an Ansible Playbook" % x)
+
         # TODO: more error handling
 
         hosts = ds.get('hosts')

lib/ansible/playbook/task.py

@@ -26,9 +26,19 @@ class Task(object):
         'play', 'notified_by', 'tags', 'with_items', 'first_available_file'
     ]
 
+    # to prevent typos and such
+    VALID_KEYS = [
+         'name', 'action', 'only_if', 'async', 'poll', 'notify', 'with_items', 'first_available_file',
+         'include', 'tags'
+    ]
+
     def __init__(self, play, ds, module_vars=None):
         ''' constructor loads from a task or handler datastructure '''
 
+        for x in ds.keys():
+            if not x in Task.VALID_KEYS:
+                raise errors.AnsibleError("%s is not a legal parameter in an Ansible task or handler" % x)
+
         self.module_vars = module_vars
         self.play        = play