I'm trying to run this command from a bash script and pass the extra-vars from the bash arguments.
#!/bin/bash
ansible-playbook /path/to/playbook.yml --extra-vars "var1=1 $@" > /path/to/log/file
I run the script like below and get this error:
> ./test.bs var2=2 var3=3
ERROR! the playbook: var3=3 could not be found
I even tried escaping the quotes but it didn't work. How can I get this to run?
Or, you can change your script to use $*:
#!/bin/bash
ansible-playbook /path/to/playbook.yml --extra-vars "var1=1 $*" > /path/to/log/file
$* is might actually be the Right Thing, at least if the values are guaranteed to not get too interesting.
As long as you're on Ansible 1.2 or newer, the most robust thing to do is use jq to generate JSON. The following will do this for an arbitrary number of key=value arguments:
#!/bin/bash
jq_args=( )
jq_text='{}'
i=0
for arg in var1=1 "$@"; do
[[ $arg = *=* ]] || continue # require arguments to be in key=value form
key=${arg%%=*}
value=${arg#*=}
jq_args+=( --arg "key$i" "$key" --arg "value$i" "$value" )
jq_text+=" | .[\$key$i]=\$value$i"
((i++))
done
json_final=$(jq "${jq_args[@]}" "$jq_text" <<<"$json") # || exit
ansible-playbook /path/to/playbook.yml --extra-vars "$json_final"
You are passing one long argument to --extra-vars since it's all within the same " marks. You are building a single string of var1=1 arg1 arg2 arg3.
Your intention was likely to instead pass three arguments, each one a string that look like var1=1 var2=2 var3=3
With that said, try this.
ansible-playbook /path/to/playbook.yml --extra-vars "var1=1" "$@" > /path/to/log/file
This way you are passing the first arg as the string "var1=1" and then bash expands "$@" into the individual arguments that you've passed to the program.
So with the above snippet ./test.bs var2=2 var3=3 will properly execute. For sanity though it's good practice to wrap your args in " though in this case its not necessary. It's good to get in the habit though since one day you'll run ./test.bs var2=* and get some crazy output. So the final, most sane, call would be...
./test.bs "var2=2" "var3=3"
"$@" causes splits between distinct arguments to be preserved. Try running set -- one two three; printf '<%s>\n' "start$@end", and you'll see startone as the first argument, two as the second, and threeend as the last. Compare to the same but with "start$*end" -- in that case everything's passed as just one argument.Run it like this:
> ./test.bs 'var2=2 var3=3'
This seems correct and should work.
Quoting and not quoting var1=1 $@ will make a difference only for the way the arguments are passed in. Not quoting it will allow arguments to be passed quoted (i.e. "var2=2 var3=3") or unquoted (i.e. var2=2 var3=3) as it will expand space separated arguments into separate arguments. If $@ is quoted, the arguments must be passed not quoted or individually quotted (i.e. "var2=2" "var3=3") so they are accepted as individual arguments.
One option that would work for sure is using eval, however, that is usually avoided as it allows passing unsafe data. Bascially just put eval before the command:
eval ansible-playbook /path/to/playbook.yml --extra-vars "var1=1 $@" \
> /path/to/log/file
It will go through the command, parsing it and removing all first level quotes, making the command ansib ... --extra-vars var1=1 var2=2 var3=3 > /path....
--extra-vars. It expects a single argument to follow -- ie. from docs.ansible.com/ansible/…, see the example with ansible-playbook release.yml --extra-vars "version=1.23.45 other_variable=foo"eval rather than make it --extra-vars "var1=1" "$@"?eval also exposes your data to parsing as code -- if $@ had an argument originally specified as var4='$(rm -rf ~)', someone would have a very bad day).
"$@"expands to multiple separate arguments. Thus,"var1=1 var2=2" "var3=3"