Ansible - reading inventory file

Question

I have an inventory file

[hosttype1]
Server
Server2
[hosttype2]
server3
server4

I am trying to read this as a whole into ansible. The file is used in the normal way to define hosts and types for code deploy, but I need to also read the full content for adding into a config file.

the inventory file differs for different environments being deployed, so there is no fixed location for it.

Is it possible to read the file and create a variable that I can then loop over and use the hosttype and a comparitor?

Answer 1

The easiest way is to use it as an inventory. For example

shell> cat hosts
[hosttype1]
Server
Server2
[hosttype2]
server3
server

shell> cat pb.yml
- hosts: localhost
  vars:
    my_groups: "{{ groups|difference(['all', 'ungrouped']) }}"
    my_hosts: "{{ my_groups|map('extract', groups)|list }}"
    my_inventory: "{{ dict(my_groups|zip(my_hosts)) }}"
  tasks:
    - debug:
        var: my_inventory

gives

shell> ansible-playbook -i hosts pb.yml 

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

TASK [debug] **********************************************************
ok: [localhost] => 
  my_inventory:
    hosttype1:
    - Server
    - Server2
    hosttype2:
    - server3
    - server