Ansible - How to include answer from previous prompt into next prompt

Question

I am working on a playbook, where I get the values for variables from console. I am trying to use the answer from first question in the prompt for the second question. But that does not work. Is it possible to do so?

This is what I have tried.

vars_prompt:

    - name: acl_username
      prompt: "User name for ACL"
      private: no

    - name: acl_password
      prompt: "Password for "
      #      prompt: "Password for {{ acl_username }}"
      private: yes

I do realise that in my initial testing, the password will be displayed, but once I get it working, I will search for how not to output the task details.

Thank you

Answer 1

You'll need to prompt for user input in tasks rather than in the vars_prompt section; variables in vars_prompt aren't available until after all the data has been collected.

You can use the poorly named pause module to prompt for user input in a task. For example:

- hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: false
  tasks:
    - name: get username
      pause:
        prompt: "User name for ACL"
        echo: true
      register: acl_username

    - name: get password
      pause:
        prompt: "Password for {{ acl_username.user_input }}"
        echo: false
      register: acl_password

    - debug:
        msg:
          - "{{ acl_username.user_input }}"
          - "{{ acl_password.user_input }}"

Running this will look something like:

PLAY [localhost] *****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

TASK [get username] **************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
[get username]
User name for ACL:
ok: [localhost]

TASK [get password] **************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
[get password]
Password for alice (output is hidden):
ok: [localhost]

TASK [debug] *********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
    "msg": [
        "alice",
        "secret"
    ]
}

PLAY RECAP ***********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
localhost                  : ok=3    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0