ansible.builtin.template: Deploy Jinja2 Templates with Ansible (Guide) — Video Tutorial

How to apply a file template to the target host with Ansible? This is extremely useful for service configuration files, placeholder web pages, reports, and so much more use cases. I'm going to show you a live Playbook with some simple Ansible code. I'm Luca Berton and welcome to today's episode of Ansible Pilot. Ansible applies a file template - ansible.builtin.template - Template a file out to a target host - ansible_managed, template_host, template_uid, template_path, template_fullpath, template_destpath, and template_run_date Today we're talking about Ansible module template. The full name is ansible.builtin.template, it's part of `ansible-core` and is included in all Ansible installations. It templates a file out to a target host. Templates are processed by the Jinja2 templating language. Also you could use also some special variables in your templates: `ansible_managed`, `template_host`, `template_uid`, `template_path`, `template_fullpath`, `template_destpath`, and `template_run_date`. It supports a large variety of Operating Systems. For basic text formatting, use the [Ansible `ansible.builtin.copy` module](/articles/create-a-text-file-ansible-module-copy) or for [empty file Ansible `ansible.builtin.file` module](/articles/create-an-empty-file-ansible-module-file). For Windows, use the `ansible.windows.win_template` module instead. Parameters - `src` path - template ("`templates/`" dir) - `dest` path - target location - `validate` string - validation command before ("`%s`") - `backup` boolean - no/yes - `mode`/`owner`/`group` - permission - `setype`/`seuser`/`selevel` - SELinux Let me highlight the most useful parameters for template module. The only required parameters are "src" and "dest". The "src" parameter specifies the template file name. Templates usually are stored under "templates" directories with ".j2" file extension. The "dest" parameter specifies the path where to render the template on the remote machine. The "validate" parameters allow you to specify the validation command to run before copying it into place. It's very useful with configuration files for services. Please note that the special escape sequence "%s" is going to be expanded by Ansible with the destination path. If the "backup" parameter is enabled Ansible creates a backup file including the timestamp information before copying it to the destination. Let me also highlight that we could also specify the permissions and SELinux properties. ## Playbook Apply a file template with Ansible Playbook code - template.yml ```yaml --- - name: template module Playbook hosts: all become: true vars: page_title: "Placeholder" page_description: | This is my placeholder page example. Multiline is possible ;-) tasks: - name: install Nginx ansible.builtin.apt: name: nginx state: latest - name: apply page template ansible.builtin.template: src: templates/placeholder.html.j2 dest: /var/www/html/i