Ansible date variable

Question

I m trying to learn how to use Ansible facts as variables  and I don t get it  When I run       ansible localhost -m setup      it lists all of the facts of my system  I selected one at random to try and use it  ansible facts ansible date time date  but I can t figure out HOW to use it  When I run       ansible localhost -m setup -a  filter ansible date time  localhost   success  gt  gt         ansible facts              ansible date time                  date    2015-07-09                day    09                epoch    1436460014                hour    10                iso8601    2015-07-09T16 40 14Z                iso8601 micro    2015-07-09T16 40 14 795637Z                minute    40                month    07                second    14                time    10 40 14                tz    MDT                tz offset    -0600                weekday    Thursday                year    2015                        changed   false     So  it s CLEARLY there  But when I run       ansible localhost -a  echo    ansible facts ansible date time date     localhost   FAILED   gt  One or more undefined variables   ansible facts  is undefined    ansible localhost -a  echo    ansible date time date     localhost   FAILED   gt  One or more undefined variables   ansible date time  is undefined    ansible localhost -a  echo    date     localhost   FAILED   gt  One or more undefined variables   date  is undefined   What am I not getting here  How do I use Facts as variables

User · Answer

Note that the ansible command doesn t collect facts  but the ansible-playbook command does  When running ansible -m setup  the setup module happens to run the fact collection so you get the facts  but running ansible -m command does not  Therefore the facts aren t available  This is why the other answers include playbook YAML files and indicate the lookup works

User · Answer

I tried the lookup  pipe  date   method and got trouble when I push the playbook to the tower  The tower is somehow using UTC timezone  All play executed as early as the   hours of my TZ will give me  one day later of the actual date   For example  if my TZ is Asia Manila I supposed to have UTC 8  If I execute the playbook earlier than 8 00am in Ansible Tower  the date will follow to what was in UTC 0  It took me a while until I found this case  It let me use the date option  -d    8 hours     F   Now it gives me the exact date that I wanted   Below is the variable I set in my playbook     vars      cur target wd      lookup  pipe   date -d    8 hours     Y  m- b  d- a         That will give me the value of  cur target wd   2020 05-May 28-Thu  even I run it earlier than 8 00am now

User · Answer

The lookup  module of ansible works fine for me  The yml is   - hosts  test   vars      time      lookup  pipe    date -d   1 day ago       Y m d           You can replace any command with date to get result of the command

User · Answer

The filter option filters only the first level subkey below ansible facts

User · Answer

The command ansible localhost -m setup basically says  run the setup module against localhost   and the setup module gathers the facts that you see in the output   When you run the echo command these facts don t exist since the setup module wasn t run  A better method to testing things like this would be to use ansible-playbook to run a playbook that looks something like this   - hosts  localhost   tasks        - debug  var ansible date time        - debug  msg  the current date is    ansible date time date       Because this runs as a playbook facts for localhost are gathered before the tasks are run   The output of the above playbook will be something like this   PLAY  localhost                                                      GATHERING FACTS                                                                 ok   localhost   TASK   debug var ansible date time                                              ok   localhost    gt         ansible date time              date    2015-07-09            day    09            epoch    1436461166            hour    16            iso8601    2015-07-09T16 59 26Z            iso8601 micro    2015-07-09T16 59 26 896629Z            minute    59            month    07            second    26            time    16 59 26            tz    UTC            tz offset     0000            weekday    Thursday            year    2015           TASK   debug msg  the current date is    ansible date time date                 ok   localhost    gt         msg    the current date is 2015-07-09     PLAY RECAP                                                                      localhost        ok 3    changed 0    unreachable 0    failed 0

[ansible] Ansible date variable

Examples related to ansible

Examples related to fact