How can I pass variable to ansible playbook in the command line? - variables

Question

How can one pass variable to ansible playbook in the command line?
The following command didn't work:
$ ansible-playbook -i '10.0.0.1,' yada-yada.yml --tags 'loaddata' django_fixtures="tile_colors"
Where django_fixtures is my variable.

Answer 1

Reading the docs I find the section Passing Variables On The Command Line, that gives this example:
ansible-playbook release.yml --extra-vars "version=1.23.45 other_variable=foo"
Others examples demonstrate how to load from JSON string (≥1.2) or file (≥1.3)

Answer 2

Other answers state how to pass in the command line variables but not how to access them, so if you do:
--extra-vars "version=1.23.45 other_variable=foo"
In your yml file you assign these to scoped ansible variables by doing something like:
vars:
my_version: "{{ version }}"
my_other_variable: {{ other_variable }}
An alternative to using command line args is to utilise environmental variables that are already defined within your session, you can reference these within your ansible yml files like this:
vars:
my_version: "{{ lookup('env', 'version') }}"
my_other_variable: {{ lookup('env', 'other_variable') }}

Answer 3

ansible-playbook release.yml -e "version=1.23.45 other_variable=foo"

Answer 4

For some reason none of the above Answers worked for me. As I need to pass several extra vars to my playbook in Ansbile 2.2.0, this is how I got it working (note the -e option before each var):
ansible-playbook site.yaml -i hostinv -e firstvar=false -e second_var=value2

Answer 5

You can use the --extra-vars option. See the docs

Answer 6

ansible-playbook test.yml --extra-vars "arg1=${var1} arg2=${var2}"
In the yml file you can use them like this
---
arg1: "{{ var1 }}"
arg2: "{{ var2 }}"
Also, --extra-vars and -e are the same, you can use one of them.

Answer 7

s3_sync:
bucket: ansible-harshika
file_root: "{{ pathoftsfiles }}"
validate_certs: false
mode: push
key_prefix: "{{ folder }}"
here the variables are being used named as 'pathoftsfiles' and 'folder'. Now the value to this variable can be given by the below command
sudo ansible-playbook multiadd.yml --extra-vars "pathoftsfiles=/opt/lampp/htdocs/video/uploads/tsfiles/$2 folder=nitesh"
Note: Don't use the inverted commas while passing the values to the variable in the shell command

Answer 8

This also worked for me if you want to use shell environment variables:
ansible-playbook -i "localhost," ldap.yaml --extra-vars="LDAP_HOST={{ lookup('env', 'LDAP_HOST') }} clustername=mycluster env=dev LDAP_USERNAME={{ lookup('env', 'LDAP_USERNAME') }} LDAP_PASSWORD={{ lookup('env', 'LDAP_PASSWORD') }}"

Answer 9

In Ansible, we can define variables when running our playbook by passing variables at the command line using the --extra-vars (or -e) argument.
Bellow are some ways to pass variables to an Ansible playbook in the command line:
Method 1: key=value format
ansible-playbook site.yml --extra-vars "arg1=demo1 arg2=demo2"
Method 2: JSON string format
ansible-playbook site.yml --extra-vars '{"arg1":"demo1","arg2":"demo2"}'
The site.yml playbook will be:
---
- name: ansible playbook to print external variables
hosts: localhost
connection: local
tasks:
- name: print values
ansible.builtin.debug:
msg: "variable1 = {{ arg1 }}, variable2 = {{ arg2 }}"
when: arg1 is defined and arg2 is defined
Method 3: Read from an external JSON file
If you have a lot of special characters, use a JSON or YAML file containing the variable definitions.
ansible-playbook site.yml --extra-vars "#vars.json"
The vars.json file:
{
arg1: "demo1",
arg2: "demo2"
}

Answer 10

ansible-playbook release.yml --extra-vars "username=hello password=bye"
#you can now use the above command anywhere in the playbook as an example below:
tasks:
- name: Create a new user in Linux
shell: useradd -m -p {{username}} {{password}}"

Answer 11

ansible-playbok -i <inventory> <playbook-name> -e "proc_name=sshd"
You can use the above command in below playbooks.
---
- name: Service Status
gather_facts: False
tasks:
- name: Check Service Status (Linux)
shell: pgrep "{{ proc_name }}"
register: service_status
ignore_errors: yes
debug: var=service_status.rc`