# New "with\_fileglob", lookup plugins system **URL:** \ **Category:** Ansible Project\ **Created:** [October 13, 2012, 12:07am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/new-with-fileglob-lookup-plugins-system/11974 "2012-10-13T00:07:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2012, 12:07am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/new-with-fileglob-lookup-plugins-system/11974/1 "2012-10-13T00:07:57Z")
Remember with\_items? It's annoying to have to list a lot of files to template out if they all belong in the same directory. In fact, there are all kinds of times you may want to work with variables that come from other sources that you don't want to enter in. Let's make this easier. Starting now, you can now do this: == BEGIN EXAMPLE == - hosts: somehosts   tasks:     - file: src=/tmp/foo state=directory     - copy: src=$item dest=/tmp/foo       with\_fileglob: /etc/\* === END EXAMPLE == This would copy /etc/motd into /tmp/fuzz/motd and so on! Boom! Developers only: "fileglob" is a lookup plugin, see runner/lookup\_plugins in the source code. As with all of our plugins, it is user extensible. A lookup plugin takes a simple string of terms and must return a list. Other proposed lookup plugins might be to get a single scalar value from a web service, like the current temperature in Siberia. It can be ANYTHING. Wait, you say, that is a single value, and not a list! How do a write a plugin for that? No problem, make the plugin return a list of one element! Want your lookup plugin to return a list of hashes? No problem, it's cool with that. In the future, there can be other types of lookup plugins. The aforementioned and existing "$PIPE" and "$FILE" template hacks will also be ported to lookup plugins eventually, maybe even super soon. In which case their syntax will remain, but in many cases, you can do simpler stuff! One immediate plugin that could come to mind might be this: vars:   users: ['bob', 'timmy', 'fred'] tasks:   - authorized\_key: user=${item.name} key=${item.key}     with\_ssh\_keys: users=${users} JP Mens originally implemented quite a few more, and I imagine many are core shippable. I will make a note to write this one in particular for 0.9, but that looks like an AWESOME way to distribute authorized SSH keys to me. Can you think of more? Sure. 'with\_pipe' is an easy arbitrary one, which is more or less like xargs for Ansible. One note: As a result of this the 'force' option of the file module is somewhat munged because it attempts to do crazy things like convert between directories and files and ... in my opinion this is sort of crazy. I will spend a bit of time looking at it and the force= option on the file module, as I suspect hardly anyone uses it, is likely to get scrapped. Check it out and let me know what you think! Code was more complicated than I imagined than to achieve this level of syntax, so I'll warn you it's not trivial to trace how this works. Some refactoring will come later. --Michael ---
**Author:** ![Daniel\_Hokka\_Zakriss](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f05b48/32.png) [@Daniel\_Hokka\_Zakriss](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Daniel_Hokka_Zakriss)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2012, 11:56am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/new-with-fileglob-lookup-plugins-system/11974/2 "2012-10-13T11:56:02Z")
Michael DeHaan wrote: > \ > > One note: As a result of this the 'force' option of the file module > is somewhat munged because it attempts to do crazy things like convert > between directories and files and ... in my opinion > this is sort of crazy. I will spend a bit of time looking at it and > the force= option on the file module, as I suspect hardly anyone uses > it, is likely to get scrapped. I don't see how this is related? But I certainly do use it, it is a lot cleaner than the 3 actions required otherwise to set /etc/localtime. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2012, 12:19pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/new-with-fileglob-lookup-plugins-system/11974/3 "2012-10-13T12:19:32Z")
> I don't see how this is related? But I certainly do use it, it is a lot > cleaner than the 3 actions required otherwise to set /etc/localtime. It may be ok, I'll take a look at it, but I had to weaken various tests it was doing to prevent certain types of transitiions when force was not set. It probably was more of an issue with those checks than the actual force behavior, I'll know when I get done figuring out which tests are happy or not.