# with\_file is what I've been looking for **URL:** \ **Category:** Ansible Project\ **Created:** [January 10, 2013, 9:26pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-file-is-what-ive-been-looking-for/12194 "2013-01-10T21:26:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dylan\_Martin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8797f3/32.png) [@Dylan\_Martin](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Dylan_Martin)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 9:26pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-file-is-what-ive-been-looking-for/12194/1 "2013-01-10T21:26:25Z")
If you’re learning to use ansible, as I am, you might find this helpful. I just discovered that you can do stuff like this: # pretend my\_rpms.txt is a text file full of the names of rpm packages that I want to install, one name per line - name: install some rpms from yum yum: name=$item with\_file: my\_rpms.txt There’s also a with\_pipe and with\_fileglob and all kinds of stuff in lib/ansible/runner/lookup\_plugins/ in the ansible source tree. I didn’t find this documented anywhere, so I thought I’d mention it in the list to help anyone else who is in the same situation as me. Thanks! -Dylan ---
**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:** [January 10, 2013, 9:33pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-file-is-what-ive-been-looking-for/12194/2 "2013-01-10T21:33:12Z")
Ouch, they don't seem to be documented on [http://ansible.cc/docs/playbooks2.html](http://ansible.cc/docs/playbooks2.html) ! They should be. I'll file a bug. --Michael ---
**Author:** ![Yves\_Dorfsman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/9de0a6/32.png) [@Yves\_Dorfsman](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Yves_Dorfsman)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 11:32pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-file-is-what-ive-been-looking-for/12194/3 "2013-01-10T23:32:15Z")
In this case does it run the rpm command once for each line in the file? I am running into this situation with apt-get, running apt-get against a large list of packages is much faster than running it once against each package, also, you can solve dependency issues this way (if there is a choice of dependency for a given package). ---
**Author:** ![Yves\_Dorfsman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/9de0a6/32.png) [@Yves\_Dorfsman](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Yves_Dorfsman)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 11:32pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-file-is-what-ive-been-looking-for/12194/4 "2013-01-10T23:32:59Z")
Is there a way to make this option aware of comments, like only using lines that do not start with a hash sign? ---
**Author:** ![Dylan\_Martin1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ed655f/32.png) [@Dylan\_Martin1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Dylan_Martin1)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 12:17am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-file-is-what-ive-been-looking-for/12194/5 "2013-01-11T00:17:22Z")
The yum and apt modules have extra brains that lets them use $item efficiently. So, it's not running yum a separate time for each module. My example was wrong: with\_lines does what I described. If you wanted to skip lines with a hash, you could probably use with\_pipe like with\_pipe: grep -v '^#" my\_rpms.txt but I'm not sure if you'd need to json-ifty the output. ---
**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:** [January 11, 2013, 1:15pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-file-is-what-ive-been-looking-for/12194/6 "2013-01-11T13:15:21Z")
It's not presently possible, though as I can't think of any reason why this would ever be a bad thing the way it was originally intended (to keep a package list as a separate file, for instance), I'll gladly take patches to enable this. ---
**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:** [January 11, 2013, 1:23pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-file-is-what-ive-been-looking-for/12194/7 "2013-01-11T13:23:38Z")
FWIW, it seems it should also skip blank lines. ---
**Author:** ![Brian\_Coca1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Brian\_Coca1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brian_Coca1)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 2:30pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-file-is-what-ive-been-looking-for/12194/8 "2013-01-11T14:30:51Z")
filter= option that defaults to blank lines and those that start with # or ;? ---
**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:** [January 11, 2013, 3:11pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-file-is-what-ive-been-looking-for/12194/9 "2013-01-11T15:11:30Z")
I'd make it default to ignoring blanks and "#". Only worry about a filter arg if we need it later. ---
**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:** [January 11, 2013, 4:21pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-file-is-what-ive-been-looking-for/12194/10 "2013-01-11T16:21:11Z")
Michael DeHaan wrote: > I'd make it default to ignoring blanks and "#". > > Only worry about a filter arg if we need it later. with\_file only gets complete files. For processing line-based data, there is with\_lines which takes a command to execute, where you can use grep as you see fit. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Dylan\_Martin1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ed655f/32.png) [@Dylan\_Martin1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Dylan_Martin1)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 4:21pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-file-is-what-ive-been-looking-for/12194/11 "2013-01-11T16:21:24Z")
What I'd really like is some way to pipe with\_X plugins through each other. with\_file = reads the contents of a file but doesn't output json. with\_lines = reads contents of a file and outputs json, one item per line. with\_pipe = puts output into one var. Should we write with\_pipe\_lines to make with\_pipe output json? Maybe something like with:   - file: $filename   - grep: -v "^#"   - grep: -v "^[[:space:]]\*$"   - lines\_to\_json: I've used imaginary with\_grep and with\_lines\_to\_json ---
**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:** [January 11, 2013, 4:22pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-file-is-what-ive-been-looking-for/12194/12 "2013-01-11T16:22:52Z")
We know this. However, executing grep is gross here, adds additional syntax, and we will be smarter than this. ---
**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:** [January 11, 2013, 4:24pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-file-is-what-ive-been-looking-for/12194/13 "2013-01-11T16:24:04Z")
If you want this, I'd suggest you write a plugin to do it, but it's going to have to look a little different. I am not interested in seeing this complication in core, and want to see the number of concepts not continue to grow unbounded 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Dylan\_Martin1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ed655f/32.png) [@Dylan\_Martin1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Dylan_Martin1)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 4:31pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/with-file-is-what-ive-been-looking-for/12194/14 "2013-01-11T16:31:33Z")
Roger. Sorry. Got carried away. I keep wanting to do everything inside the playbook.