How to replace a specfic line by also ignoring lines with a specific character using ansible?

Question

Lets say this is my nginx configuration file for SSL

#ssl_certificate "/etc/pki/nginx/server.crt" 
    #ssl_certificate_key "/etc/pki/nginx/private/server.key";


    ssl_certificate /etc/pki/nginx/server.crt  
ssl_certificate_key /etc/pki/nginx/private/server.key      


#    ssl_certificate "/etc/pki/nginx/server.crt";
  #     ssl_certificate_key "/etc/pki/nginx/private/server.key" 

I want to be able to replace with ansible (lineinfile module) the uncommented ssl_certificate line

This is my code for "ssl_certificate" line

lineinfile:
       path: /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/site1
       regexp: '^ssl_certificate | ssl_certificate '
       line: 'ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/ssl/site1/fullchain.crt'

For some reason this only works if the line I want to replace is set at the start of the line and it replaces the commented line from the bottom if "ssl_certificate" is separated from the "#".

Is there a way for lineinfile to ignore lines that have "#" in them?

I tried [^#] in combination with other things and insertbefore and inserafter and such but nothing works it either replaces the commented line or adds a new line at the bottom.

Answer 1

The below task works if you want to only replace a single reference in the file,

- name: Replace the cert file
  lineinfile:
       path: /root/tmp.txt
       regexp: '^\s*ssl_certificate\s.*'
       line: 'ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/ssl/site1/fullchain.crt'

And if you want to replace multiple lines, you can use the following task,

- name: Replace cert file
  replace:
        path: /root/tmp.txt
        regexp: '^\s*ssl_certificate\s.*'
        replace: 'ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/ssl/site1/fullchain.crt'

Update the file path accordingly.