Ansible conditionals
Ansible conditionals are similar to conditional statements in programming languages. In Chapter 1, Review of TCP/IP Protocol Suite and Python, we saw that Python uses conditional statements to execute only a section of the code by using if
, then
, or while
statements. In Ansible, it uses conditional keywords to only run a task when a given condition is met. In many cases, the execution of a play or task may depend on the value of a fact, variable, or the previous task result. For example, if you have a play to upgrade router images, you want to include a step to make sure the new router image is on the device before you move on to the next play of rebooting the router.
In this section, we will discuss the when
clause, which is supported for all modules, as well as unique conditional states that are supported in Ansible networking command modules. Some of the conditions are as follows:
- Equal to (eq)
- Not equal to (neq)
- Greater than (gt)
- Greater...