I posted an issue recently on github (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/23394) and was advised to post here on the user list since the issue I am encountering is not a bug. I am re-posting the content here with the response I received.
**************** I have a variable defined from user input in the main playbook, which I would like to pass to an included playbook. The docs say I should be able to do this (http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks_roles.html) unless I misunderstood. I tried different variations in trying to pass the variable to the included playbook. STEPS TO REPRODUCE: Here's my first try: myMainPlay.yml hosts: myHost vars_prompt: name: ticket_number prompt: "Ticket #" private: no pre_tasks: name: Create staging directory file: path: "{{ deploy_dir }}/RT{{ ticket_number }}/staging" state: directory include: testInclude.yml testInclude.yml tasks: name: checking via debug debug: msg: "the value of ticket_number is {{ ticket_number }}" The resulting error --> "msg": "the field 'args' has an invalid value, which appears to include a variable that is undefined. The error was: 'ticket_number' is undefined\n\nThe error appears to have been in '/mydirectory/testInclude.yml': line 8, column 5, but may\nbe elsewhere in the file depending on the exact syntax problem.\n\nThe offending line appears to be:\n\n\n - name: checking via debug\n ^ here\n" Note that the main play was able to create the directory with the ticket_number passed in. Next, I tried the following changes but with the same error -- [myMainPlay.yml] - include: testInclude.yml number="{{ ticket_number }}" [testInclude.yml] msg: "the value of number is {{ number }}" Based on this link --> ( http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26784185/ansible-passing-evaluated-variables-to-includes) --> the first one should have worked without having to pass the variable explicitly in the include statement. Anyway, I tried explicitly passing variables in the include statement as shown above but it didn't work. It only worked when I passed something like number=1234567, and testInclude.yml was able to pick it up. Response: We believe the ticket you have filed is being somewhat misunderstood, as one thing works a little differently than stated. Play vars are not shared across plays, even when one of them is included, only hostvars are available across plays. ************ So it looks like I misunderstood the Ansible document ("Using either syntax, variables passed in can then be used in the included files.") For now, I added "--extra-vars ticket_number=1234567" to the command line. However, I'd like to keep the command line invocation of ansible-playbook as short as possible. Does anyone have any ideas/suggestions how I can pass in a user inputed value into an included playbook? Thanks. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ansible Project" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ansible-project+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to ansible-project@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ansible-project/89a683e5-4e55-4d5d-b776-f34dafbe7ee4%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
