how to use dynamic variable set in one play as an input to a task in another play

[Kathy Allen]

Hiya.

In my playbook, I have two plays: the first is to be run on the control host, the second is run on a set of remote app hosts. What I want to do is have a variable determined by a task in the first play be used as a shell script argument for a task in the second play. I don't know how to do this. Can anyone help? Is this possible?

Here's a simplification of how these are called in my ansible deployment orchestration playbook. The json determined by a tool on the control host in common/test_prep.yml needs to be used as the input parameter to a tool which is called inside of common/test_client_check.yml on each client 'myhosts'.




$ cat testplaybook.yml
---
- hosts: 127.0.0.1
  connection: local
  gather_facts: False
  tasks:

- include: "{{ playbook_dir }}/pb_test.yml myhosts=app_set1"

$ cat pb_test.yml
---
- include: common/test_prep.yml
- include: common/test_client_check.yml

$ cat common/test_prep.yml
---
- hosts: 127.0.0.1
  connection: local
  gather_facts: false
  tasks:

  - name: Check authoritative DNS for app datasources
    local_action: shell ../bin/dns_check
    ignore_errors: true
    register: check_results

  - debug: var=check_results.stdout_lines[0]
  - set_fact: json_as_input_for_next_play={{ check_results.stdout_lines[0] }}
  - debug: var=json_as_input_for_next_play

$ cat common/test_client_check.yml
---
- hosts: '{{ myhosts }}'
  gather_facts: false
  tasks:
    # this ruby script returns a Boolean
  - name: Check DNS for app datasources on the clients
    shell: /usr/local/bin/client-side-lookup json_as_input_for_next_play
    sudo: yes

# When running it by hand, the json needs to be surrounded by single quotes:
#client#  /usr/local/bin/client-side-lookup '{"db1.example.com":"10.4.4.113","db2.example.com":"10.4.4.114"}'

How do I make this happen? Thank you!

kallen

[Brian Coca]

the data you want is in:

hostvars['localhost']['json_as_input_for_next_play']

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--
Brian Coca

[Kathy Allen]

Yep. Thank you! A coworker pointed out a similar post: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/ansible-project/felix/ansible-project/C51U547IXwY/2IyoNqCZpTQJ. Sorry I didn't catch that one before I posted my question.

I feared that hostvars dict created in localhost task might not be available to the remote host. But that's not the case, it is available and it worked.

kallen