Check the docker container status

[ishan jain]

I have a pretty straightforward script where i copy some configuration files from ansible host to a linux machine and then start a docker container mounting those config files. 

My Docker container are immutable, so i don't mind recreating them often. In fact, i would like to recreate them in case config changes or they are found stopped. For this i really need a nice way to check status of a container. So the first question - How can i check the status of a Docker container in Ansible ? (i would like to avoid the solution where we match for container name and status in the output of Docker ps command)

Currently, my simple idempotent script is:

---

- hosts: docker

  tasks:

    - name: copy config files to docker hosts

      copy: src="src" dest=/opt/mounted/

      

    - name: start docker container

      docker:

        name: container

        image: image

        state: started

        volumes:

          - /opt/mounted:/opt/config/:ro

The script is pretty idempotent but for my case, it really is not because for some reasons, i need to recreate the container in case Ansible finds that either config files have changed or container was stopped. Now i can create handlers which would simply first delete and then create containers and i can notify them if config files change, but they really don't do well in case of first run or when container is stopped. I need a task which checks if container is stopped or non-existent and then i will call that handler again. How can i arrange my playbook to do that ?