Old thread, but it popped up in my goog when I was looking for answers.
Since I worked out two different solutions, I wanted to share them.
1)
I needed to get a user account home directory and share it with a role.
Just using register meant I would have to use "variable.stdout"
everywhere. Instead I used the pre_tasks section of the playbook to
retrieve the value and then pulled the key/value out on the role's variable
declaration. Here's the code I used. I hope this helps out others.
pre_tasks:
- name: Get ansible_user home directory
shell: 'getent passwd "{{ansible_ssh_user}}" | cut -d: -f6'
register: ansible_home_result
roles:
- { role: boxprep_debian, ansible_home:
'{{ansible_home_result.stdout}}', when: ansible_os_family == 'Debian' }
- { role: boxprep_redhat, ansible_home:
'{{ansible_home_result.stdout}}', when: ansible_os_family == 'RedHat' }
2)
Another approach that is far more elaborate but can solve anything is to
create a python application that uses jinja2, and then process all your
.yml files as if they were jinja2 templates. The python application can
solve any kind of variable instantiation challenge while leaving the .yml
reusable for other scenarios. Because jinja2 will only process the
template variables it is told to, it will leave other {{variables}} for
ansible to define. I use this approach to query an elaborate AWS cluster,
and then preprocess the ansible scripts.
On Thursday, March 14, 2013 6:19:43 PM UTC-7, Will Thames wrote:
>
> Let's say that I want to use a variable if it's passed to ansible-playbook
> (via -e) and derive it otherwise
>
> I can use register to get the results of the derivation, but the actual
> information I need is then typically in the stdout property.
>
> Is there a better way to do the following ?
>
> ---
> ...
> tasks:
> - name: derive latest 2.5 release
> local_action: shell ls /var/releases/v2.5-* | tail -1
> register: release
> when_unset: $version
>
> - name: register version into release
> local_action: command echo $version
> register: release
> when_set: $version
>
>
> I would prefer the second task to be something like this (rather than
> having to store the result of echoing the property!)
>
> - name: store release.stdout into version
> local_action: variable name=version value=${release.stdout}
> when_unset: $version
>
> And then just use $version after that.
>
> Hope that makes sense - basically I just want to be able to set arbitrary
> variables during a playbook run rather than just before.
> An alternative would be if register could be given an attribute that says
> 'only store stdout' (or stderr or any other property)
>
> e.g.
> register: property=stdout release
> or
> register: property=rc returncode
>
> Will
>
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