# Storing facts centrally **URL:** \ **Category:** Ansible Project\ **Created:** [September 11, 2012, 9:17am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/storing-facts-centrally/11880 "2012-09-11T09:17:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Nigel\_Metheringham](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Nigel\_Metheringham](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Nigel_Metheringham)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2012, 9:17am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/storing-facts-centrally/11880/1 "2012-09-11T09:17:14Z")
Is there a mechanism to save the facts from the setup module in a local file on the central machine? ie a sort of collision between the fetch and setup modules 🙂 [I know I can run setup as a ansible standalone command, but I'd like to be able to save the setup from a whole set of machines from within a playbook]   Nigel. ---
**Author:** ![jpmens1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jpmens1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/jpmens1)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2012, 9:40am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/storing-facts-centrally/11880/2 "2012-09-11T09:40:18Z")
Nigel, > Is there a mechanism to save the facts from the setup module in a local > file on the central machine? Yes there is, using a callback. (I'm crafting an article on how to do that as we speak.) Have a look at lib/ansible/callback\_plugins/ specifically the `log\_plays.py' example therein. Ansible used to drop the setup on the managed nodes, but that feature was removed. Callbacks allow us to, say, take the facts and shove them into a database.         -JP ---
**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:** [September 11, 2012, 12:01pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/storing-facts-centrally/11880/3 "2012-09-11T12:01:20Z")
> Ansible used to drop the setup on the managed nodes, but that feature > was removed. Callbacks allow us to, say, take the facts and shove them > into a database. Ansible-commander is going to contain one of these to allow browsing the current state of facts on all nodes, as well as finding nodes based on fact-values. However, to get something like fetch, it's simpler: ansible all -m setup --tree /tmp/dump\_path Which will save one JSON file per host name in the "dump\_path" directory. ---
**Author:** ![Timothy\_Appnel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Timothy\_Appnel](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Timothy_Appnel)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2012, 4:57pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/storing-facts-centrally/11880/4 "2012-09-14T16:57:19Z")
I'm just catching up on some of the other threads here. I solved this with a template and a playbook. The playbook collects the facts -- nodeinfo is a module I developed that collects other facts that Ansible's default set does not handle. I then run a task a template on the localhost to generate the file with the to\_json filter. The playbook: - name: collect and cache facts about hosts   hosts: all:!localhost   tasks:   - name: collect node info     action: nodeinfo - name: generate facts file   hosts: localhost   tasks:   - name: writing facts     action: template src=templates/hostvars.j2 dest=~/facts.json The template: {{ hostvars|to\_json|safe }} If you don't have extra node info to collect like me, you have a couple of options. Do a ping in the first play -- simple quick and harmless. Another thing I could have done is combined the two plays and write a local file per host something like this (untested): hosts: all!localhost tasks:   - name: writing facts     action: template src=templates/hostvars.j2 dest=~/${inventory\_hostname}.facts.json     delegate\_to: localhost {{ hostvars[inventory\_hostname] | to\_json | safe }} The one thing I don't like so much about tjis solution is creating such a tiny never changing "template" to achieve this. Being able to pass a string instead of a filename to the template engine would be nice. \