Ansible data manipulation with a Filter

Background:

This year at Summit, an attendee posed a question about how to work with setting facts and changing data in Ansible. Many times we’ve come across people using task after task to manipulate data, to turn items into lists, filter our options, trying to do heavy data manipulation and to turn data from one source into another. Trying to make these programmatic changes using a mixture of YAML and Jinja inside of roles and playbooks is a headache of its own. While many of these options will work, they aren’t very efficient or easy to implement. Ansible Playbooks were never meant for programming.

One solution that is usually overlooked is to do the manipulation in Python inside of a module or a filter. This article will detail how to create a filter to manipulate data. In addition, a repository for all code referenced in this article has been created. 

This example was first developed as a module. However after review, it was determined that these data transformations are best done as filters. Filters can take multiple data inputs, do the programmatic operations, and then can be used in line where they are used as input or set as Continue reading

Ansible data manipulation with a Filter

This year at Summit, an attendee posed a question about how to work with setting facts and changing data in Ansible. Many times we’ve come across people using task after task to manipulate data, to turn items into lists, filter our options, trying to do heavy data manipulation and to turn data from one source into another. Trying to make these programmatic changes using a mixture of YAML and Jinja inside of roles and playbooks is a headache of its own. While many of these options will work, they aren’t very efficient or easy to implement. Ansible Playbooks were never meant for programming.

One solution that is usually overlooked is to do the manipulation in Python inside of a module or a filter. This article will detail how to create a filter to manipulate data. In addition, a repository for all code referenced in this article has been created.

This example was first developed as a module. However after review, it was determined that these data transformations are best done as filters. Filters can take multiple data inputs, do the programmatic operations, and then can be used in line where they are used as input or set as a fact. Continue reading

Automation controller workflow deployment as code

Background: The Automation Controller Collection

The Automation Controller Collection allows Ansible Playbooks to automate the interaction with automation controller. For example, manually interacting via the Web-based UI or the API can now be automated just as the targets it manages.

This Collection provides a programmatic way to create, update or delete automation controller objects as well as perform tasks such as run jobs, change configurations and much more. This article discusses new updates to this Collection, as well as an example playbook and details on how to run it successfully.

The ansible.controller Ansible Collection is the downstream supported distribution available on Ansible automation hub, made to work with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.  The awx.awx Collection is the upstream community distribution available on Ansible Galaxy.  For more details on the difference between Ansible Galaxy and Ansible automation hub, please refer to Ajay Chenampara’s blog post.

In this post, we are use the ansible.controller Collection, but this can be replaced with the legacy ansible.tower or the awx.awx Collection depending on the user’s needs.

Using the Collection with Workflows

One of the goals of the Automation Controller Collection is to allow users to Continue reading