Ansible: How to Accept User Input using vars_prompt and Command line?

It’s been few months I started playing with Ansible. In this tutorial, we will go over how to use vars_prompt ansible section if you may wish to prompt the user for certain input while running ansible playbook.

Let’s get started:

Step-1

Create hosts file and put it under folder called /Users/Shared/ansible.

[local]
localhost ansible_connection=local ansible_python_interpreter=python

[defaults]
host_key_checking=false

[crunchify]
localhost

Step-2

Put your default ansible.cfg file under the same folder.

[defaults]
ansible_ssh_user=crunchify
inventory=hosts
host_key_checking=false

Step-3

Create file crunchify.yml file in which we will use vars_prompt section to get user input.

---
- hosts: crunchify
  connection: local
  vars_prompt:

    - name: website
      prompt: "What is your website?"
      private: no

    - name: country
      prompt: "Enter Country Name?"
      private: no

  tasks:

    - debug:
        msg: 'Website name: {{ website }}. Country name: {{ country }}'

Step-4

Run ansible playbook.

bash-3.2$ pwd
/Users/Shared/ansible

bash-3.2$ ansible-playbook -vvv crunchify.yml

Checkout console output:

bash-3.2$ ansible-playbook -vvv crunchify.yml
ansible-playbook 2.9.9
  config file = /Users/Shared/ansible/ansible.cfg
  configured module search path = [u'/Users/Shared/.ansible/plugins/modules', u'/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/ansible
  executable location = /usr/local/bin/ansible-playbook
  python version = 2.7.16 (default, Apr 17 2020, 18:29:03) [GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 11.0.3 (clang-1103.0.29.20) (-macos10.15-objc-
Using /Users/Shared/ansible/ansible.cfg as config file
host_list declined parsing /Users/Shared/ansible/hosts as it did not pass its verify_file() method
script declined parsing /Users/Shared/ansible/hosts as it did not pass its verify_file() method
auto declined parsing /Users/Shared/ansible/hosts as it did not pass its verify_file() method
Parsed /Users/Shared/ansible/hosts inventory source with ini plugin

PLAYBOOK: crunchify.yml ****************************************************************************************************************************************
1 plays in crunchify.yml
What is your website?: Crunchify.com
Enter Country Name?: United States

PLAY [crunchify] ***********************************************************************************************************************************************

TASK [Gathering Facts] *****************************************************************************************************************************************
task path: /Users/Shared/ansible/crunchify.yml:2
<localhost> ESTABLISH LOCAL CONNECTION FOR USER: Shared
<localhost> EXEC /bin/sh -c 'echo ~Shared && sleep 0'
<localhost> EXEC /bin/sh -c '( umask 77 && mkdir -p "` echo /Users/Shared/.ansible/tmp `"&& mkdir /Users/Shared/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1591586311.68-34952-72441309640701 && echo ansible-tmp-1591586311.68-34952-72441309640701="` echo /Users/Shared/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1591586311.68-34952-72441309640701 `" ) && sleep 0'
Using module file /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/ansible/modules/system/setup.py
<localhost> PUT /Users/Shared/.ansible/tmp/ansible-local-34946d45ikK/tmpuEtZGL TO /Users/Shared/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1591586311.68-34952-72441309640701/AnsiballZ_setup.py
<localhost> EXEC /bin/sh -c 'chmod u+x /Users/Shared/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1591586311.68-34952-72441309640701/ /Users/Shared/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1591586311.68-34952-72441309640701/AnsiballZ_setup.py && sleep 0'
<localhost> EXEC /bin/sh -c 'python /Users/Shared/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1591586311.68-34952-72441309640701/AnsiballZ_setup.py && sleep 0'
<localhost> EXEC /bin/sh -c 'rm -f -r /Users/Shared/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1591586311.68-34952-72441309640701/ > /dev/null 2>&1 && sleep 0'
ok: [localhost]
META: ran handlers

TASK [debug] ***************************************************************************************************************************************************
task path: /Users/Shared/ansible/crunchify.yml:16
ok: [localhost] => {
    "msg": "Website name: Crunchify.com. Country name: United States"
}
META: ran handlers
META: ran handlers

PLAY RECAP *****************************************************************************************************************************************************
localhost                  : ok=2    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0   

How to skip user prompt and accept arguments via command line:

bash-3.2$ ansible-playbook -vvv crunchify.yml -e "website='Crunchify.com' country='United States'"

Please let us know if you face any issue running ansible script.