Ansible Magic Variables: Complete Reference with Examples — Video Tutorial

How to Use Ansible Magic Variables in Ansible Playbook I'm going to show you a live Playbook and some simple Ansible code. I'm Luca Berton and welcome to today's episode of Ansible Pilot. Ansible Magic Variables How to Ansible Magic Variables in Ansible Playbook. The good news is that Ansible provides some internal variables that come out of the box with some information such as running the Ansible version, inventory details, or execution options. Some examples: - `playbook_dir` The path to the directory of the playbook that was passed to the ansible-playbook command line - `inventory_dir` The directory of the inventory source in which the inventory_hostname was first defined - `inventory_file` The file name of the inventory source in which the inventory_hostname was first defined - `inventory_hostname` The inventory name for the 'current' host is being iterated over in the play - `ansible_check_mode` / `ansible_diff_mode` Boolean that indicates if we are in check/diff mode or not - `ansible_version` Dictionary/map that contains information about the currently running version of ansible, it has the following keys: full, major, minor, revision and string. Links The full list is available on the official Ansible website [Magic variables](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/reference_appendices/special_variables.html) ## Playbook How to use Ansible Magic Variables in Ansible Playbook? Let's see in action some of the most common Ansible Magic Variables in an Ansible Playbook. I'm going to display the current value of the following variables: - `ansible_config_file` The full path of the used Ansible configuration file playbook_dir The path to the directory of the playbook was passed to the ansible-playbook command line. - `inventory_dir` The directory of the inventory source in which the inventory_hostname was first defined - `inventory_file` The file name of the inventory source in which the inventory_hostname was first defined - `ansible_check_mode` Boolean that indicates if we are in check mode or not - `ansible_diff_mode` Boolean that indicates if we are in diff mode or not - `ansible_forks` Integer reflecting the number of maximum forks available to this run - `ansible_verbosity` Current verbosity setting for Ansible - `inventory_hostname` The inventory name for the 'current' host is being iterated over in the play - `ansible_play_hosts` List of hosts in the current play run, not limited by the serial. Failed/Unreachable hosts are excluded from this list. - `ansible_version` Dictionary/map that contains information about the currently running version of ansible, it has the following keys: full, major, minor, revision and string. code ```yaml --- - name: magic vars Playbook hosts: all gather_facts: false tasks: - name: magic variable ansible.builtin.debug: var: "{{ item }}" loop: - ansible_config_file - playbook_dir - inventory_dir - inventory_f