In playbook interate over a hash to rm files

[Kenton Brede]

Just starting out with Ansible.  Currently I've got:

---
- hosts: myhost.example.com
  remote_user: user1
  sudo: yes
  tasks:
    - name: remove select files in root
      command: /bin/rm /root/{{ item }}
      with_items:
        - testing
        - testing2

This works fine but for each directory I have to create a new task.

What I'd like to do is something like:

tasks:
  - name: remove files
    command: /bin/rm {{ dir/files }}
    dirs_files:
      dir: '/root'
        files:
          - testing
          - testing2
      dir: '/home/user'
        files:
          - testfile
          - testfile2

Obviously that's not going to work but hopefully it illustrates what I'd like to do.  I just don't want to have to write different tasks for different directories.

Any help appreciated.
Thanks,
Kent

[Strahinja Kustudić]

Check out looping over subelements http://docs.ansible.com/playbooks_loops.html#looping-over-subelements

[Adam Morris]

This could get unwieldy quickly but is there some reason why you can't use...

- name: remove files

  file: path={{ item }} state=absent

  with_items:

    - '/root/testing'

    - '/root/testing2'

    - '/home/user/testfile'

    - '/home/user/testfile2'

 

This has the big advantage over the commands version that it is actually idempotent.  If it has to remove the files it will, but if they are already gone it will report that the task was 'OK'.  Your version might well report failed if the file no longer exists.

Adam