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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. 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.
