ansible_date_time: Use Date, Time & Timestamps in Ansible Playbooks — Video Tutorial

How to use Date, Time, and Timestamp without Facts in Ansible Playbook. A quick and dirty workaround using the `date` command-line utility. 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. Using Date, Time, and Timestamp without Facts in Ansible Playbook Date and time - `date +%Y-%m-%d@%H:%M:%S` ISO8601 - `date --iso-8601=seconds` - `date +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z` How to Use the Date, Time, and Timestamp in Ansible Playbook. The `ansible_data_time` fact is an amazing resource but sometimes you can't have it or you don't want to use the date and time of the remote host. These solutions enable you to print the Date and Time and ISO8601 format. I ended up after carefully reading the `date` man page. Unfortunately not all the platforms support the `--iso-8601` parameter so you need to build it manually the format by yourself (for example in macOS operating system). Links - [`ansible.builtin.pipe lookup plugin`](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/ansible/builtin/pipe_lookup.html) - [`date man page`](https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/date.1.html) - [ISO8601](https://www.iso.org/iso-8601-date-and-time-format.html) ## Playbook Let's jump into a quick live Playbook of Using Date, Time, and Timestamp in the Ansible Playbook. I'm going to share with you how to display the full `ansible_date_time ` and the ISO8601 format. code ```yaml --- - name: date and time Playbook hosts: all gather_facts: false tasks: - name: date and time ansible.builtin.debug: msg: "{{ lookup('pipe', 'date +%Y-%m-%d@$H:%M:%S') }}" - name: iso8601 manual ansible.builtin.debug: msg: "{{ lookup('pipe', 'date +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z') }}" - name: iso8601 ansible.builtin.debug: msg: "{{ lookup('pipe', 'date --iso8601=seconds') }}" ignore_errors: true ``` execution ```bash $ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/demo/inventory variables/datetime_nofact.yml PLAY [date and time Playbook] ************************************************************************* TASK [date and time] ****************************************************************************** ok: [demo.example.com] => { "msg": "2022-05-22@:57:33" } TASK [iso8601 manual] ***************************************************************************** ok: [demo.example.com] => { "msg": "2022-05-22T14:57:33+0200" } TASK [iso8601] ************************************************************************************ date: illegal option -- - usage: date [-jnRu] [-d dst] [-r seconds] [-t west] [-v[+|-]val[ymwdHMS]] ... [-f fmt date | [[[mm]dd]HH]MM[[cc]yy][.ss]] [+format] fatal: [demo.example.com]: FAILED! => {"msg": "An unhandled exception occurred while running the lookup plugin 'pipe'. Error was a , original message: lookup_plugin.pipe(date --iso8601=seconds) returned 1. lookup_plugin.pipe(date -