Is it possible build a file in local by using template module?

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1

Now,the template module woule build the template file and send to the remote host.
Is it possible for not send to the remote host?

I just want to see the file in local machine.

2

Yep. The basics are that you could do:

  • local_action: template src=src.j2 dest=/path/to/local/system

However, this is a bit of a trap, if you are iterating over 500 hosts in a group, this will run 500 times, and clobber the file 500 times, possibly from multiple processes at once.

So this is better:

  • hosts: webservers
    tasks:

  • blah

  • blah

  • hosts: localhost
    tasks:

  • template:

  • hosts: webservers
    tasks:

  • more

  • more

Etc.

3

- local_action: template src=src.j2
dest=/path/to/local/system/{{inventory_hostname}}_templateresult

4

Absolutely. I use this technique to help combat the deprecation of include + with_items. Something like:

- name: normalize apache_sites_list into variable file
local_action: template dest={{ apache_sites_var_file }} src="apache_sites_normalized.j2"

- name: load normalized `apache_sites_normalized` from variable file
include_vars: "{{ apache_sites_var_file }}"

- name: remove variable file
local_action: file path={{ apache_sites_var_file }} state=absent

where apache_sites_var_file is defined as:

apache_sites_var_file: /tmp/ansible.apache_sites.{{ inventory_hostname }}.yml

NOTE that it uses {{ inventory_hostname }} to help prevent issues with parallel execution.

May be an “anti pattern” in this establishment; but helped me write cleaner playbooks.

5

I’m not even sure I’d call it a pattern :slight_smile:

Writing variables to a template should be totally unneccessary if you’re just going to load it in that way, because of the way lazy-loading in Ansible already works.

If you want dog to contain the value of cat, you can just predeclare dog:

dog: “{{ cat }}”

You don’t have to write a variable file to load it.