Running ansible-playbook using Python API

Question

Deprecation Notice: This post doesn't work as of ansible 2. The API was changed.

This covered in the Ansible documentation under "Python API."

For example, ansible -i hosts dbservers -m setup is implemented via:

import ansible.runner

runner = ansible.runner.Runner(
   module_name='setup',
   module_args='',
   pattern='dbservers',
)
dbservers_get_facts = runner.run()

There are a bunch of non-documented parameters in the __init__ method of Runner (from ansible.runner). There's too many to list inline, but I've included some of the parameters in this post as a guess to what you're specifically looking for.

class Runner(object):
    ''' core API interface to ansible '''

    # see bin/ansible for how this is used...

    def __init__(self,
        host_list=C.DEFAULT_HOST_LIST,      # ex: /etc/ansible/hosts, legacy usage
        module_path=None,                   # ex: /usr/share/ansible
        module_name=C.DEFAULT_MODULE_NAME,  # ex: copy
        module_args=C.DEFAULT_MODULE_ARGS,  # ex: "src=/tmp/a dest=/tmp/b"
        ...
        pattern=C.DEFAULT_PATTERN,          # which hosts?  ex: 'all', 'acme.example.org'
        remote_user=C.DEFAULT_REMOTE_USER,  # ex: 'username'
        remote_pass=C.DEFAULT_REMOTE_PASS,  # ex: 'password123' or None if using key
        remote_port=None,                   # if SSH on different ports
        private_key_file=C.DEFAULT_PRIVATE_KEY_FILE, # if not using keys/passwords
        sudo_pass=C.DEFAULT_SUDO_PASS,      # ex: 'password123' or None
        ...
        sudo=False,                         # whether to run sudo or not
        sudo_user=C.DEFAULT_SUDO_USER,      # ex: 'root'
        module_vars=None,                   # a playbooks internals thing
        play_vars=None,                     #
        play_file_vars=None,                #
        role_vars=None,                     #
        role_params=None,                   #
        default_vars=None,                  #
        extra_vars=None,                    # extra vars specified with he playbook(s)
        is_playbook=False,                  # running from playbook or not?
        inventory=None,                     # reference to Inventory object
        ...
        su=False,                           # Are we running our command via su?
        su_user=None,                       # User to su to when running command, ex: 'root'
        su_pass=C.DEFAULT_SU_PASS,
        vault_pass=None,
        ...
        ):

For instance, the above command that specifies a sudo user and pass would be:

runner = ansible.runner.Runner(
   module_name='setup',
   module_args='',
   pattern='dbservers',
   remote_user='some_user'
   remote_pass='some_pass_or_python_expression_that_returns_a_string'
)

For playbooks, look into playbook.PlayBook, which takes a similar set of initializers:

class PlayBook(object):
    '''
    runs an ansible playbook, given as a datastructure or YAML filename.
    ...
    '''

    # *****************************************************

    def __init__(self,
        playbook         = None,
        host_list        = C.DEFAULT_HOST_LIST,
        module_path      = None,
        .... 

and can be executed with the .run() method. e.g.:

from ansible.playbook import PlayBook
pb = PlayBook(playbook='/path/to/book.yml, --other initializers--)
pb.run()

more robust usage can be found in the ansible-playbook file.

As far as I know, translating playbooks to Python modules is a bit more involved, but the documentation listed above should get you covered and you can reuse the YAML parser built into Ansible to convert playbooks to variables.

Just a quick code update that works on 2.8.3,

from ansible import context
from ansible.cli import CLI
from ansible.module_utils.common.collections import ImmutableDict
from ansible.executor.playbook_executor import PlaybookExecutor
from ansible.parsing.dataloader import DataLoader
from ansible.inventory.manager import InventoryManager
from ansible.vars.manager import VariableManager

loader = DataLoader()

context.CLIARGS = ImmutableDict(tags={}, listtags=False, listtasks=False, listhosts=False, syntax=False, connection='ssh',
                    module_path=None, forks=100, remote_user='xxx', private_key_file=None,
                    ssh_common_args=None, ssh_extra_args=None, sftp_extra_args=None, scp_extra_args=None, become=True,
                    become_method='sudo', become_user='root', verbosity=True, check=False, start_at_task=None)

inventory = InventoryManager(loader=loader, sources=('/xxx/inventory_file',))

variable_manager = VariableManager(loader=loader, inventory=inventory, version_info=CLI.version_info(gitinfo=False))

pbex = PlaybookExecutor(playbooks=['/xxx/playbook.yml'], inventory=inventory, variable_manager=variable_manager, loader=loader, passwords={})

results = pbex.run()

I have answered the question here Posting this here cause posting links is discouraged in the community. Hope it helps.

The documentation is surprisingly lacking and you'll have to get started here

That being said, here is a quick script I hacked together that manages to run a playbook.

#!/usr/bin/env python

import os
import sys
from collections import namedtuple

from ansible.parsing.dataloader import DataLoader
from ansible.vars.manager import VariableManager
from ansible.inventory.manager import Inventory
from ansible.executor.playbook_executor import PlaybookExecutor

loader = DataLoader()

inventory = Inventory(loader=loader, sources='/home/slotlocker/hosts2')
variable_manager = VariableManager(loader=loader, inventory=inventory)
playbook_path = '/home/slotlocker/ls.yml'

if not os.path.exists(playbook_path):
    print '[INFO] The playbook does not exist'
    sys.exit()

Options = namedtuple('Options', ['listtags', 'listtasks', 'listhosts', 'syntax', 'connection','module_path', 'forks', 'remote_user', 'private_key_file', 'ssh_common_args', 'ssh_extra_args', 'sftp_extra_args', 'scp_extra_args', 'become', 'become_method', 'become_user', 'verbosity', 'check','diff'])
options = Options(listtags=False, listtasks=False, listhosts=False, syntax=False, connection='ssh', module_path=None, forks=100, remote_user='slotlocker', private_key_file=None, ssh_common_args=None, ssh_extra_args=None, sftp_extra_args=None, scp_extra_args=None, become=True, become_method='sudo', become_user='root', verbosity=None, check=False, diff=False)

variable_manager.extra_vars = {'hosts': 'mywebserver'} # This can accomodate various other command line arguments.`

passwords = {}

pbex = PlaybookExecutor(playbooks=[playbook_path], inventory=inventory, variable_manager=variable_manager, loader=loader, options=options, passwords=passwords)

results = pbex.run()

Based on vigilander's answer, I took the liberty to upload a pkg to pypi and now you can use this simple ansible runner:

Just pip install ansible-playbook-runner and run:

from ansible_playbook_runner import Runner

Runner(['inventory_path'], 'playbook_path').run()