# callback and facts **URL:** \ **Category:** Ansible Developer\ **Created:** [October 4, 2014, 3:10pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/callback-and-facts/16430 "2014-10-04T15:10:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![maxime.gerges31](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@maxime.gerges31](https://forum.ansible.com/u/maxime.gerges31)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2014, 3:10pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/callback-and-facts/16430/1 "2014-10-04T15:10:07Z")
Hello, I’m trying to tune ansible in order to : 1. Connect to a list of Cisco devices (switches + router) and pull facts from the devices (S/N, interfaces,…) 2. Create a report with each fact’s devices in a CSV file For the 1st point I’m currently writing a new module based on Exscript that connects to the device, issue some _show_ commands, parse the output and create some facts based on those outputs. For the 2nd point I was thinking of a callback plugin using the on\_stats methods. Indeed the on\_stats method is called at the end of the playbook. **Unfortunately, I don’t understand from the ansible code how facts are created and where in the playbook they are avalaible.** Is it possible to retrieve facts at the end of the playbook for all hosts reachable ? Thanks for you help 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![sivel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/user_avatar/forum.ansible.com/sivel/32/1198_2.png) [@sivel](https://forum.ansible.com/u/sivel)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2014, 3:44pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/callback-and-facts/16430/2 "2014-10-04T15:44:08Z")
You should be able to do something like: for host in self.playbook.inventory.get\_hosts(): facts = host.get\_variables() # Do something with facts ---
**Author:** ![maxime.gerges31](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@maxime.gerges31](https://forum.ansible.com/u/maxime.gerges31)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2014, 9:04pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/callback-and-facts/16430/3 "2014-10-04T21:04:32Z")
Thanks for your answer ! It works great for variables but as far as I tested it doesn’t get facts out. I ran a setup module which pull down a lot of fact from a linux box but those facts are not in get\_variables(). Nevertheless I will investigate on this little issue. ---
**Author:** ![sivel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/user_avatar/forum.ansible.com/sivel/32/1198_2.png) [@sivel](https://forum.ansible.com/u/sivel)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2014, 10:39pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/callback-and-facts/16430/4 "2014-10-04T22:39:50Z")
Ah, in that case, something like this may be what you want: hostvars = utils.merge\_hash(self.playbook.SETUP\_CACHE.copy(), self.playbook.VARS\_CACHE) That will also require import ansible.utils: from ansible import utils ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan1)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2014, 6:07pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/callback-and-facts/16430/5 "2014-10-05T18:07:25Z")
I’d strongly suggest a template instead of a callback, it would be a lot cleaner. ---
**Author:** ![maxime.gerges31](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@maxime.gerges31](https://forum.ansible.com/u/maxime.gerges31)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2014, 2:09pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/callback-and-facts/16430/6 "2014-10-19T14:09:44Z")
Hello michael, What do you mean about a template ? what is it really and how to use it ? Thanks in advance 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan1)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 9:38pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/callback-and-facts/16430/7 "2014-10-20T21:38:58Z")
Just dumping a templated file to the local filesystem that contains what you want to see, and saying “go read output.txt” for the results, versus writing a custom callback plugin. ---
**Author:** ![maxime.gerges31](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@maxime.gerges31](https://forum.ansible.com/u/maxime.gerges31)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2014, 5:47pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/callback-and-facts/16430/8 "2014-11-05T17:47:20Z")
Thanks for the answer michael. One more question regarding callback. We are currently looking to developp different callback in order to stock facts/vars in CSV & in database. This means we will create 2 callbacks. I’d like to know if there is any way to enable one/several callback from a playbook variable ? Does Ansible ship with such feature ? An example will be that all callbacks will have their disabled attribute set to False, then the playbook could read a specific attribute and activate only specific callback based on this attribute. Thanks for you support. ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan1)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 2:27pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/callback-and-facts/16430/9 "2014-11-07T14:27:11Z")
Pretty much what you said… Your callback could decide to set a “self.active = True/False” in the constructor, and each method could return “if not self.active” to basically no-op. ---
**Author:** ![maxime.gerges31](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@maxime.gerges31](https://forum.ansible.com/u/maxime.gerges31)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 9:22am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/callback-and-facts/16430/10 "2014-11-08T09:22:06Z")
Thank fort the answer. My question was how to set the active variable to true/false based on a variable define in the yaml playbook? ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan1)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2014, 9:46pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/callback-and-facts/16430/11 "2014-11-17T21:46:37Z")
The callback interface isn’t really going to see much of those variables directly, unless you jump through some hoops that may not be part of a stable API. You might want to consider making it learn from an environment variable, depending on the use case.