A Read-Eval-Print Loop for Ansible

One must-have tool for any language is the availability of a REPL to quickly check out the syntax of an API or test out an idea really quickly. Ansible is no different, especially since sometimes, you might have a very long running playbook and it may be difficult to wait for it to run before discovering you had the syntax for something off at the end.

Ansible's Lesser-Known Read-Eval-Print Loop Tool

Luckily, Ansible comes with the lesser known ansible-console command. You can use this to execute any one of the modules included in ansible to roughly test something out and can run it against a local or remote host.

vagrant @monitor: ~$ ansible - console localhost[WARNING]: Host file not found: /etc/ansible / hosts

 [WARNING]: provided hosts list is empty, only localhost is available

Welcome to the ansible console.
Type help or ? to list commands.

vagrant @localhost(1)[f: 5] $ setup

# very long json of facts omitted

vagrant @localhost(1)[f: 5] $ debug msg = ”distribution version reversed
is {
 {
  ansible_distribution_version | reverse
 }
}”
localhost | SUCCESS => {“
 msg”: “distribution version reversed is 40.41”
}

You can run ad-hoc commands on the machine through it, as well.

vagrant@localhost (1)[f:5]$ ls /tmplocalhost | SUCCESS | rc=0 >>ansible_busvWCvagrant-ansiblevagrant-shell

This also doubles as an easy and cheap REPL for Jinja2, as well, if you need to test some Jinja2 syntax out.