Vars Plugins

• Enabling vars plugins
• Using vars plugins
• Plugin Lists

Vars plugins inject additional variable data into Ansible runs that did not come from an inventory source, playbook, or command line. Playbook constructs like ‘host_vars’ and ‘group_vars’ work using vars plugins.

Vars plugins were partially implemented in Ansible 2.0 and rewritten to be fully implemented starting with Ansible 2.4.

The host_group_vars plugin shipped with Ansible enables reading variables from Assigning a variable to one machine: host variables and Assigning a variable to many machines: group variables.

Enabling vars plugins

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

Using vars plugins

Vars plugins are used automatically after they are enabled.

Plugin Lists

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

• host_group_vars – In charge of loading group_vars and host_vars