ansible/docs/docsite/rst/user_guide/playbooks_templating.rst

Templating (Jinja2)

Ansible uses Jinja2 templating to enable dynamic expressions and access to variables. Ansible includes a lot of specialized filters and tests for templating. You can use all the standard filters and tests <jinja2:builtin-filters> included in Jinja2 as well. Ansible also offers a new plugin type: lookup_plugins.

All templating happens on the Ansible controller before the task is sent and executed on the target machine. This approach minimizes the package requirements on the target (jinja2 is only required on the controller). It also limits the amount of data Ansible passes to the target machine. Ansible parses templates on the controller and passes only the information needed for each task to the target machine, instead of passing all the data on the controller and parsing it on the target.

playbooks_filters playbooks_tests playbooks_lookups playbooks_python_version

Get the current time

2.8

The now() Jinja2 function retrieves a Python datetime object or a string representation for the current time.

The now() function supports 2 arguments:

utc

Specify True to get the current time in UTC. Defaults to False.

fmt

Accepts a strftime string that returns a formatted date time string.

playbooks_intro

An introduction to playbooks

playbooks_conditionals

Conditional statements in playbooks

playbooks_loops

Looping in playbooks

playbooks_reuse_roles

Playbook organization by roles

playbooks_best_practices

Tips and tricks for playbooks

Jinja2 Docs

Jinja2 documentation, includes the syntax and semantics of the templates

User Mailing List

Have a question? Stop by the google group!

irc.freenode.net

#ansible IRC chat channel