Ansible xml manipulation similar to lineinfile

Question

In Ansible, I'm looking for a technique that works similar to lineinfile or replace but for XML files when using templates is not an option. Seems like a very common need.

With XML files, though, it is necessary to specify an xpath to guarantee the element is present/absent from the correct place in the DOM.

The solution needs to ensure there is a mechanism of replacing an existing node that could look quite a bit different than the target node.

Trivial example XML file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<datasources-configuration xmlns:myns="http://org.someorg.ds/config">
  <datasources>
    <!-- various other xml -->
    <datasource>
        <name>MyDS</name>
        <jdbcUrl>...</jdbcUrl>
    </datasource>
  </datasources>
  <!-- various other xml -->
</datasources-configuration>

I want to be able to ensure a full multiline block of XML gets inserted/replaced into target XML file given a certain xpath expression is matched. For example, to add the following datasource to datasources:

   <datasource>
      <name>AnotherDS</name>
      <jdbcUrl>...</jdbcUrl>
   </datasource>

The best that I've seen is this custom module which breaks on it's own examples: https://github.com/cmprescott/ansible-xml

Does such a module exist or solution recommendations?

Answer 1

I was just looking into this myself and discovered an ansible-xml module that looks like a great option.