How to Make Ansible variable mandatory

Question

I'm looking for the way how to make Ansible to analyze playbooks for required and mandatory variables before run playbook's execution like:

- name: create remote app directory hierarchy
  file:
    path: "/opt/{{ app_name | required }}/"
    state: directory
    owner: "{{ app_user | required }}"
    group: "{{ app_user_group | required }}"
  ...

and rise error message if variable is undefined, like:

please set "app_name" variable before run (file XXX/main.yml:99)

Answer 1

As Arbab Nazar mentioned, you can use {{ variable | mandatory }} (see Forcing variables to be defined) inside Ansible task.

But I think it looks nicer to add this as first task, it checks is app_name, app_user and app_user_group exist:

- name: 'Check mandatory variables are defined'
  assert:
    that:
      - app_name is defined
      - app_user is defined
      - app_user_group is defined

Answer 2

You can use this:

{{ variable | mandatory }}