ansible.builtin.vars - Lookup templated value of variables

This module is part of ansible-base and included in all Ansible installations. In most cases, you can use the short module name vars even without specifying the collections: keyword. Despite that, we recommend you use the FQCN for easy linking to the module documentation and to avoid conflicting with other collections that may have the same module name.

New in version 2.5: of ansible.builtin

• Synopsis
• Parameters
• Examples
• Return Values

Synopsis

• Retrieves the value of an Ansible variable. Note: Only returns top level variable names.

Parameters

Parameter	Choices/Defaults	Configuration	Comments
_terms string / required			The variable names to look up.
default string			What to return if a variable is undefined. If no default is set, it will result in an error if any of the variables is undefined.

Examples

- name: Show value of 'variablename'
  debug: msg="{{ lookup('vars', 'variabl' + myvar) }}"
  vars:
    variablename: hello
    myvar: ename

- name: Show default empty since i dont have 'variablnotename'
  debug: msg="{{ lookup('vars', 'variabl' + myvar, default='')}}"
  vars:
    variablename: hello
    myvar: notename

- name: Produce an error since i dont have 'variablnotename'
  debug: msg="{{ lookup('vars', 'variabl' + myvar)}}"
  ignore_errors: True
  vars:
    variablename: hello
    myvar: notename

- name: find several related variables
  debug: msg="{{ lookup('vars', 'ansible_play_hosts', 'ansible_play_batch', 'ansible_play_hosts_all') }}"

- name: Access nested variables
  debug: msg="{{ lookup('vars', 'variabl' + myvar).sub_var }}"
  ignore_errors: True
  vars:
    variablename:
        sub_var: 12
    myvar: ename

- name: alternate way to find some 'prefixed vars' in loop
  debug: msg="{{ lookup('vars', 'ansible_play_' + item) }}"
  loop:
    - hosts
    - batch
    - hosts_all

Return Values

Common return values are documented here, the following are the fields unique to this lookup:

Key	Returned	Description
_value list / elements=raw	success	value of the variables requested.

Authors

• Ansible Core Team

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