community.general.filetree – recursively match all files in a directory tree

• Synopsis
• Parameters
• Examples
• Return Values

Synopsis

• This lookup enables you to template a complete tree of files on a target system while retaining permissions and ownership.
• Supports directories, files and symlinks, including SELinux and other file properties.
• If you provide more than one path, it will implement a first_found logic, and will not process entries it already processed in previous paths. This enables merging different trees in order of importance, or add role_vars to specific paths to influence different instances of the same role.

Parameters

Examples

- name: Create directories
  ansible.builtin.file:
    path: /web/{{ item.path }}
    state: directory
    mode: '{{ item.mode }}'
  with_community.general.filetree: web/
  when: item.state == 'directory'

- name: Template files (explicitly skip directories in order to use the 'src' attribute)
  ansible.builtin.template:
    src: '{{ item.src }}'
    # Your template files should be stored with a .j2 file extension,
    # but should not be deployed with it. splitext|first removes it.
    dest: /web/{{ item.path | splitext | first }}
    mode: '{{ item.mode }}'
  with_community.general.filetree: web/
  when: item.state == 'file'

- name: Recreate symlinks
  ansible.builtin.file:
    src: '{{ item.src }}'
    dest: /web/{{ item.path }}
    state: link
    follow: false  # avoid corrupting target files if the link already exists
    force: yes
    mode: '{{ item.mode }}'
  with_community.general.filetree: web/
  when: item.state == 'link'

- name: list all files under web/
  ansible.builtin.debug:
    msg: "{{ lookup('community.general.filetree', 'web/') }}"

Return Values

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

Authors

• Dag Wieers (@dagwieers) <dag@wieers.com>