Httpapi Plugins

• Adding httpapi plugins
• Using httpapi plugins
• Viewing httpapi plugins

Httpapi plugins tell Ansible how to interact with a remote device’s HTTP-based API and execute tasks on the device.

Each plugin represents a particular dialect of API. Some are platform-specific (Arista eAPI, Cisco NXAPI), while others might be usable on a variety of platforms (RESTCONF). Ansible loads the appropriate httpapi plugin automatically based on the ansible_network_os variable.

Adding httpapi plugins

You can extend Ansible to support other APIs by dropping a custom plugin into the httpapi_plugins directory. See Developing httpapi plugins for details.

Using httpapi plugins

The httpapi plugin to use is determined automatically from the ansible_network_os variable.

Most httpapi plugins can operate without configuration. Additional options may be defined by each plugin.

Plugins are self-documenting. Each plugin should document its configuration options.

The following sample playbook shows the httpapi plugin for an Arista network device, assuming an inventory variable set as ansible_network_os=eos for the httpapi plugin to trigger off:

- hosts: leaf01
  connection: httpapi
  gather_facts: false
  tasks:

    - name: type a simple arista command
      eos_command:
        commands:
          - show version | json
      register: command_output

    - name: print command output to terminal window
      debug:
        var: command_output.stdout[0]["version"]

See the full working example on GitHub.

Viewing httpapi plugins

These plugins have migrated to collections on Ansible Galaxy. If you installed Ansible version 2.10 or later using pip, you have access to several httpapi plugins. To list all available httpapi plugins on your control node, type ansible-doc -t httpapi -l. To view plugin-specific documentation and examples, use ansible-doc -t httpapi.