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Ansible- Loops

Ansible - Loops

Ansible loop provides a lot of methods to repeat certain tasks until a condition is met.

A basic example which can be used to install a lot of Linux packages can be written like the below example.

- name: Ansible Loop example
  apt:
    name: "{{ item }}"
    state: present
  with_items:
     - python3
     - ca-certificates
     - git

In the above task, instead of writing 3 separate task we have consolidated them into a single task.

In each iteration, the value of with_items block will be inserted in place of {{ item }}.

Ansible loop with Index

In some scenarios knowing the index value might come in handy. You can use the -with indexed_items” **for this. The loop index will be available at **item.0 and the value will be available at item.1. index value starts at zero as usual.

- hosts: all
  tasks:
  - name: Ansible loop with index example
    debug:
      msg: "echo loop index at {{ item.0 }} and value at {{item.1}}"
    with_indexed_items:
      - "hello1"
      - "hello2"
      - "hello3"

You can also make changes to the index value like addition, subtraction etc.

- name: Ansible loop with index modification example
  debug:
    msg: "echo loop index at {{ item.0 + 1}} and value at {{item.1}}"

Ansible loop with conditional

You can also use the -when” conditional statement along with the loop structure. Thus you can control the looping based on a variable or system facts.

The following example will run the task when the loop value is the same as the -loop_1” variable. Note that -item” is not enclosed in double brackets.

- hosts: all
  vars:
    loop_1: "hello1"
  tasks:
  - name: Ansible loop with conditional example
    debug:
      msg: "{{ item }}"
    with_items:
      - "hello1"
      - "hello2"
      - "hello3"
    when: item == "{{ loop_1 }}"
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