ansible.builtin.ini – Uses an Ansible INI file as inventory source.

• Synopsis
• Notes
• Examples

Synopsis

• INI file based inventory, sections are groups or group related with special :modifiers.
• Entries in sections [group_1] are hosts, members of the group.
• Hosts can have variables defined inline as key/value pairs separated by =.
• The children modifier indicates that the section contains groups.
• The vars modifier indicates that the section contains variables assigned to members of the group.
• Anything found outside a section is considered an ‘ungrouped’ host.
• Values passed in the INI format using the key=value syntax are interpreted differently depending on where they are declared within your inventory.
• When declared inline with the host, INI values are processed by Python’s ast.literal_eval function (https://docs.python.org/2/library/ast.html#ast.literal_eval) and interpreted as Python literal structures (strings, numbers, tuples, lists, dicts, booleans, None). Host lines accept multiple key=value parameters per line. Therefore they need a way to indicate that a space is part of a value rather than a separator.
• When declared in a :vars section, INI values are interpreted as strings. For example var=FALSE would create a string equal to FALSE. Unlike host lines, :vars sections accept only a single entry per line, so everything after the = must be the value for the entry.
• Do not rely on types set during definition, always make sure you specify type with a filter when needed when consuming the variable.
• See the Examples for proper quoting to prevent changes to variable type.

Notes

Examples

example1: |
    # example cfg file
    [web]
    host1
    host2 ansible_port=222 # defined inline, interpreted as an integer

    [web:vars]
    http_port=8080 # all members of 'web' will inherit these
    myvar=23 # defined in a :vars section, interpreted as a string

    [web:children] # child groups will automatically add their hosts to parent group
    apache
    nginx

    [apache]
    tomcat1
    tomcat2 myvar=34 # host specific vars override group vars
    tomcat3 mysecret="'03#pa33w0rd'" # proper quoting to prevent value changes

    [nginx]
    jenkins1

    [nginx:vars]
    has_java = True # vars in child groups override same in parent

    [all:vars]
    has_java = False # 'all' is 'top' parent

example2: |
    # other example config
    host1 # this is 'ungrouped'

    # both hosts have same IP but diff ports, also 'ungrouped'
    host2 ansible_host=127.0.0.1 ansible_port=44
    host3 ansible_host=127.0.0.1 ansible_port=45

    [g1]
    host4

    [g2]
    host4 # same host as above, but member of 2 groups, will inherit vars from both
          # inventory hostnames are unique