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

# fmt: ini
# Example 1
[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

# Example 2
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