Hi All,
I have a shell script from which I am invoking an ansible playbook.
My playbook checks for some status of my services and I want this information to be available in my shell script after playbook execution is complete.
I have to share data from ansible to shell script that invoked the playbook.
Any idea how can we do that?
Thanks
You might want to use a custom callback to modify the output to a format you want to consume.
Hi Brian, can you please provide me with an example or any link to samples of this custom call back?
The callbacks don’t work as using callback I am not able to remove messages like
`
PLAY [all] *********************************************************************
TASK [cmx_running_services] ****************************************************
…
PLAY RECAP *********************************************************************
172.31.35.225 : ok=2 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0
172.31.9.253 : ok=2 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0
`
I want my playbook to output only in json format and no such text like above
Have you tried json call_back_plugin, it does exactly that?
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/intro_configuration.html#stdout-callback
Yes I tried it and it outputs json content for each task. Something like this:
`
TASK [create some file] ********************************************************
ok: [172.31.9.253 → localhost]
{“group”: “ubuntu”, “_ansible_no_log”: false, “_ansible_delegated_vars”: {“ansible_host”: “localhost”}, “changed”: false, “host”: “172.31.9.253”, “invocation”: {“module_args”: {“directory_mode”: null, “force”: false, “remote_src”: null, “path”: “/tmp/services_status.json.tmp”, “owner”: null, “follow”: true, “group”: null, “state”: null, “content”: null, “serole”: null, “diff_peek”: null, “setype”: null, “dest”: “/tmp/services_status.json.tmp”, “selevel”: null, “original_basename”: “services.j2”, “regexp”: null, “validate”: null, “src”: null, “seuser”: null, “recurse”: false, “delimiter”: null, “mode”: null, “backup”: null}}, “state”: “file”, “gid”: 1000, “mode”: “0664”, “diff”: {“after”: {“path”: “/tmp/services_status.json.tmp”}, “before”: {“path”: “/tmp/services_status.json.tmp”}}, “owner”: “ubuntu”, “path”: “/tmp/services_status.json.tmp”, “size”: 542, “uid”: 1000}
ok: [172.31.35.225 → localhost]
{“group”: “ubuntu”, “_ansible_no_log”: false, “_ansible_delegated_vars”: {“ansible_host”: “localhost”}, “changed”: false, “host”: “172.31.35.225”, “invocation”: {“module_args”: {“directory_mode”: null, “force”: false, “remote_src”: null, “path”: “/tmp/services_status.json.tmp”, “owner”: null, “follow”: true, “group”: null, “state”: null, “content”: null, “serole”: null, “diff_peek”: null, “setype”: null, “dest”: “/tmp/services_status.json.tmp”, “selevel”: null, “original_basename”: “services.j2”, “regexp”: null, “validate”: null, “src”: null, “seuser”: null, “recurse”: false, “delimiter”: null, “mode”: null, “backup”: null}}, “state”: “file”, “gid”: 1000, “mode”: “0664”, “diff”: {“after”: {“path”: “/tmp/services_status.json.tmp”}, “before”: {“path”: “/tmp/services_status.json.tmp”}}, “owner”: “ubuntu”, “path”: “/tmp/services_status.json.tmp”, “size”: 542, “uid”: 1000}
TASK [debug] *******************************************************************
…
`
This is not helpful to me as I only want json output and no thing in between, because in shell script I want to read this output and convert the output to json object.
Please let me know if I am not clear with my requirement.
When I run with the json callback in 2.1.1 I only get json output in return. Your output indicate you are not using json callback_plugin.
So how do you set up Ansible to use json callback?
I just added in my ansible.cfg file:
`
stdout_callback = skippy
callback_plugins = /home/ubuntu/projects/package/target/ansible/plugins/callback
`
Downloaded plugin from https://github.com/petems/ansible-json and added it in the above folder.
Now when I execute the playbook, I get the kind of output I mentioned earlier
I also tried using plugin from https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/lib/ansible/plugins/callback/json.py
But it gives me syntax error in “json.py” when I execute my playbook. I think it requires Python 3, I am having python 2.7.6 and I can’t upgrade to python 3
I am using Ansible version 2.1.1.0
Ansible comes with the json callback plugins and some others you'll find them in /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ansible/plugins/callback/
To use the provided json callback set "stdout_callback = json" and remove the "callback_plugins =" in your ansible.cfg. Then you should only get a json output.
wow it worked 
thanks Kai
However just one last question, I have multiple playbook but I want this json out only for one. So I cant have this config in ansible.cfg
Is there a way to pass this config other than editing this ansible.cfg file?
use the ANSIBLE_STDOUT_CALLBACK environment varialbe:
ANSIBLE_STDOUT_CALLBACK=json ansible-playbook …