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About Luca Berton

Luca Berton is an Ansible automation expert, author of 8 Ansible books published by Apress and Leanpub including "Ansible for VMware by Examples" and "Ansible for Kubernetes by Example", and creator of the Ansible Pilot YouTube channel. He shares practical automation knowledge through tutorials, books, and video courses to help IT professionals and DevOps engineers master infrastructure automation.

Ansible lookup file Plugin: Read Local File Content into Variable (Guide) — Video Tutorial

How to read file content into a variable with Ansible lookup('file') plugin. Load config files, SSH keys, certificates into playbook variables.

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Tutorial summary

What you'll learn

  • How to read a file into a variable on the host with Ansible?
  • Ansible read a file into a variable
  • Parameters and Return Values
  • Parameters
  • Return Values
  • code
  • execution
  • idempotency
  • Conclusion
  • File Lookup Examples
How to read a file into a variable on the host with Ansible? Ansible read a file into a variable - `ansible.builtin.file` - read file contents Let's deep dive into the Ansible lookup plugin file. Plugins are a way to expand the Ansible functionality. With lookup plugins specifically, you can load variables or templates with information from external sources. The full name is `ansible.builtin.file`, it's part of `ansible-core` and is included in all Ansible installations. The purpose of the `file` lookup plugin is to read file contents. Parameters and Return Values Parameters - \_terms string - path(s) of files to read Return Values - \_raw list - content of file(s) The parameters of the lookup plugin `file`. The only required parameter is the default "\_terms", with the path(s) of files to read. The normal usage is to assign the lookup plugin to a variable name that you could use in your playbook. ## Playbook Read a file into a variable on the host with Ansible Playbook. code ```yaml --- - name: read file on host hosts: all vars: contents: "{{ lookup('file','example.txt') }}" tasks: - name: print file ansible.builtin.debug: msg: "the content of file is {{ contents }}" ``` execution ```bash ansible-pilot $ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/demo/inventory variables/read-file.yml PLAY [read file on host] ************************************************************************** TASK [Gathering Facts] **************************************************************************** ok: [demo.example.com] TASK [print file] ********************************************************************************* ok: [demo.example.com] => { "msg": "the content of file is example contents" } PLAY RECAP **************************************************************************************** demo.example.com : ok=2 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0 ansible-pilot $ ``` idempotency ```bash ansible-pilot $ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/demo/inventory variables/read-file.yml PLAY [read file on host] ************************************************************************** TASK [Gathering Facts] **************************************************************************** ok: [demo.example.com] TASK [print file] ********************************************************************************* ok: [demo.example.com] => { "msg": "the content of file is example contents" } PLAY RECAP **************************************************************************************** demo.example.com : ok=2 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0 ansible-pilot $ ``` [code with ❤️ in GitHub](https://github.com/lucab85/ansible-pilot/) Conclusion Now you know how to read a file into a variable on host with Ansible. File Lookup Examples Read SSH key ```yaml - name: Deploy SSH key vars: ssh_key: "{{ lookup('file', '~/.

About this tutorial

  • Author: Luca Berton
  • Difficulty: Beginner
  • Read time: 4 min
  • Category: installation

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