Accessing inventory host variable in Ansible playbook

Question

In Ansible 2.1, I have a role being called by a playbook that needs access to a host file variable. Any thoughts on how to access it?

I am trying to access the ansible_ssh_host in the test1 section of the following inventory host file:

[test1] test-1 ansible_ssh_host=abc.def.ghi.jkl ansible_ssh_port=1212  [test2] test2-1 ansible_ssh_host=abc.def.ghi.mno ansible_ssh_port=1212  [test3] test3-1 ansible_ssh_host=abc.def.ghi.pqr ansible_ssh_port=1212 test3-2 ansible_ssh_host=abc.def.ghi.stu ansible_ssh_port=1212  [all:children] test1 test2 test3 

I have tried accessing the role in the following fashions:

{{ hostvars.ansible_ssh_host }}  

and

{{ hostvars.test1.ansible_ssh_host }} 

I get this error:

fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"failed": true, "msg": "'ansible.vars.hostvars.HostVars object' has no attribute 'ansible'"} 

Answer 1

You are on the right track about hostvars.
This magic variable is used to access information about other hosts.

hostvars is a hash with inventory hostnames as keys.
To access fields of each host, use hostvars['test-1'], hostvars['test2-1'], etc.

ansible_ssh_host is deprecated in favor of ansible_host since 2.0.
So you should first remove "_ssh" from inventory hosts arguments (i.e. to become "ansible_user", "ansible_host", and "ansible_port"), then in your role call it with:

{{ hostvars['your_host_group'].ansible_host }} 

Answer 2

[host_group] host-1 ansible_ssh_host=192.168.0.21 node_name=foo host-2 ansible_ssh_host=192.168.0.22 node_name=bar  [host_group:vars] custom_var=asdasdasd 

You can access host group vars using:

{{ hostvars['host_group'].custom_var }} 

If you need a specific value from specific host, you can use:

{{ hostvars[groups['host_group'][0]].node_name }}