User Guide¶

Exasol Ansible Runner Wrapper wraps Python library ansible_runner and adds the following features:

Enables using Importlib resources as Ansible input directory.
Creates a temporary working directory on the fly.
Creates Ansible inventory.
Enables convenient access to Ansible’s fact cache.

Basic Classes¶

Python package exasol.ansible contains the basic classes as shown in the following figure.

Initialize the Context with an Access object and a tuple of the Repositories.
Enter the context to obtain an instance of Runner.
Call method runner.run() with the Playbook and a tuple of the Hosts.

Additional Details¶

For convenience, class ImportlibRepository extends abstract class Repository to enable instantiating a Repository using importlib resources.
Class Context
- Copies the resources to a temporary directory for executing Ansible in this directory.
- Creates the Ansible inventory file.
- Enables passing extra variables to Ansible.
- Removes the directory after Ansible has terminated.
Calling runner.run() with argument retrieve_facts_from - set to the name of one of the hosts managed by Ansible - will retrieve the Ansible fact cache from this host.
You can use class Facts to conveniently access the facts hierarchically.

Directory Structure¶

For running Ansible, you will usually provide importlib resources as Ansible input directory. That means you will have a directory within your source code containing the playbook, roles, and tasks for Ansible.

Here is an example:

package/
+- name/
   +- resources/
      +- ansible/
          +- playbook.yml
          +- roles/
             +- tasks/
                +- main.yml

The directories and filenames follow the requirements as defined in Ansible input directory.

Example Code¶

from pathlib import Path
import exasol.ansible as ansible

repositories = (ansible.ImportlibRepository("package.name.resources.ansible"),)
playbook = ansible.Playbook("playbook.yml", vars={"key": "value"})
host = ansible.Host("myhost", Path("/tmp/private_key.pem"))

with ansible.Context(ansible.Access(), repositories) as runner:
    raw_facts = runner.run(playbook, hosts=(host,) retrieve_facts_from=host.name)

facts = ansible.Facts(raw_facts, prefixes=["pfx"])
value = facts.get("parent", "child")