Lookup Plugins

The data returned by a lookup plugin is made available using the standard templating system in Ansible,and are typically used to load variables or templates with information from those systems.

Lookups are an Ansible-specific extension to the Jinja2 templating language.

Note

• Lookups are executed with a working directory relative to the role or play,as opposed to local tasks, which are executed relative the executed script.
• Since Ansible version 1.9, you can pass wantlist=True to lookups to use in Jinja2 template “for” loops.
• Lookup plugins are an advanced feature; to best leverage them you should have a good working knowledge of how to use Ansible plays.

Warning

• Some lookups pass arguments to a shell. When using variables from a remote/untrusted source, use the |quote filter to ensure safe usage.

You can activate a custom lookup by either dropping it into a directory adjacent to your play, inside a role, or by putting it in one of the lookup directory sources configured in ansible.cfg.

Lookup plugins can be used anywhere you can use templating in Ansible: in a play, in variables file, or in a Jinja2 template for the module.

tasks:
  - name: count to 3
    debug: msg={{item}}
    with_items: [1, 2, 3]

You can combine lookups with Filters, and even each other to do some complex data generation and manipulation. For example:

tasks:
  - name: valid but useless and over complicated chained lookups and filters
    debug: msg="find the answer here:\n{{ lookup('url', 'https://google.com/search/?q=' + item|urlencode)|join(' ') }}"
    with_nested:
      - "{{lookup('consul_kv', 'bcs/' + lookup('file', '/the/question') + ', host=localhost, port=2000')|shuffle}}"
      - "{{lookup('sequence', 'end=42 start=2 step=2')|map('log', 4)|list)}}"
      - ['a', 'c', 'd', 'c']

New in version 2.6.

You can now control how errors behave in all lookup plugins by setting errors to ignore, warn, or strict. The default setting is , which causes the task to fail. For example:

To ignore errors:

[WARNING]: Unable to find '/idontexist' in expected paths (use -vvvvv to see paths)
 
ok: [localhost] => {
    "msg": ""
}

To get a warning instead of a failure:

- name: file doesnt exist, let me know, but continue
  debug: msg="{{ lookup('file', '/idontexist', errors='warn') }}"

Fatal error (the default):

- name: file doesnt exist, FAIL (this is the default)
  debug: msg="{{ lookup('file', '/idontexist', errors='strict') }}"

[WARNING]: Unable to find '/idontexist' in expected paths (use -vvvvv to see paths)
 
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"msg": "An unhandled exception occurred while running the lookup plugin 'file'. Error was a <class 'ansible.errors.AnsibleError'>, original message: could not locate file in lookup: /idontexist"}

In Ansible 2.5, a new jinja2 function called query was added for invoking lookup plugins. The difference between lookup and query is largely that query will always return a list.The default behavior of lookup is to return a string of comma separated values. lookup can be explicitly configured to return a list using .

This was done primarily to provide an easier and more consistent interface for interacting with the new loop keyword, while maintaining backwards compatibiltiy with other uses of lookup.

The following examples are equivalent:

As demonstrated above the behavior of wantlist=True is implicit when using query.

Additionally, q was introduced as a shortform of query:

q('dict', dict_variable)

You can use to see the list of available plugins. Use ansible-doc -t lookup <plugin name> to see specific documents and examples.

• aws_account_attribute – Look up AWS account attributes.
• cartesian – returns the cartesian product of lists
• config – Lookup current Ansible configuration values
• consul_kv – Fetch metadata from a Consul key value store.
• cpm_status – Get status and parameters from WTI OOB and PDU devices.
• csvfile – read data from a TSV or CSV file
• dict – returns key/value pair items from dictionaries
• dnstxt – query a domain(s)’s DNS txt fields
• etcd – get info from an etcd server
• fileglob – list files matching a pattern
• first_found – return first file found from list
• grafana_dashboard – list or search grafana dashboards
• hiera – get info from hiera data
• ini – read data from a ini file
• items – list of items
• keyring – grab secrets from the OS keyring
• lines – read lines from command
• mongodb – lookup info from MongoDB
• nios_next_ip – Return the next available IP address for a network
• onepassword – fetch field values from 1Password
• password – retrieve or generate a random password, stored in a file
• pipe – read output from a command
• redis – fetch data from Redis
• sequence – generate a list based on a number sequence
• subelements – traverse nested key from a list of dictionaries
• together – merges lists into synchronized list
• vars – Lookup templated value of variables

• An introduction to playbooks
• Inventory Plugins
• Ansible inventory plugins
• Ansible callback plugins
• Filters
• Jinja2 filter plugins
• Jinja2 test plugins
• Lookups
• Jinja2 lookup plugins
• Have a question? Stop by the google group!
• irc.freenode.net

• ansible IRC chat channel