template – Template a file out to a remote server

Synopsis

  • Templates are processed by the Jinja2 templating language.

  • Documentation on the template formatting can be found in the Template Designer Documentation.

  • Additional variables listed below can be used in templates.

  • ansible_managed (configurable via the defaults section of ansible.cfg) contains a string which can be used to describe the template name, host, modification time of the template file and the owner uid.

  • template_host contains the node name of the template’s machine.

  • template_uid is the numeric user id of the owner.

  • template_path is the path of the template.

  • template_fullpath is the absolute path of the template.

  • template_destpath is the path of the template on the remote system (added in 2.8).

  • template_run_date is the date that the template was rendered.

Parameters

Parameter Choices/Defaults Comments
attributes
string
added in 2.3
The attributes the resulting file or directory should have.
To get supported flags look at the man page for chattr on the target system.
This string should contain the attributes in the same order as the one displayed by lsattr.
The = operator is assumed as default, otherwise + or - operators need to be included in the string.

aliases: attr
backup
boolean
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
Create a backup file including the timestamp information so you can get the original file back if you somehow clobbered it incorrectly.
block_end_string
string
added in 2.4
 Default:
"%}"
The string marking the end of a block.
block_start_string
string
added in 2.4
 Default:
"{%"
The string marking the beginning of a block.
dest
path / required
Location to render the template to on the remote machine.
follow
boolean
added in 2.4
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
Determine whether symbolic links should be followed.
When set to yes symbolic links will be followed, if they exist.
When set to no symbolic links will not be followed.
Previous to Ansible 2.4, this was hardcoded as yes.
force
boolean
    Choices:
  • no
  • yes ←
Determine when the file is being transferred if the destination already exists.
When set to yes, replace the remote file when contents are different than the source.
When set to no, the file will only be transferred if the destination does not exist.
group
string
Name of the group that should own the file/directory, as would be fed to chown.
lstrip_blocks
boolean
added in 2.6
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
Determine when leading spaces and tabs should be stripped.
When set to yes leading spaces and tabs are stripped from the start of a line to a block.
This functionality requires Jinja 2.7 or newer.
mode
string
The permissions the resulting file or directory should have.
For those used to /usr/bin/chmod remember that modes are actually octal numbers. You must either add a leading zero so that Ansible's YAML parser knows it is an octal number (like 0644 or 01777) or quote it (like '644' or '1777') so Ansible receives a string and can do its own conversion from string into number.
Giving Ansible a number without following one of these rules will end up with a decimal number which will have unexpected results.
As of Ansible 1.8, the mode may be specified as a symbolic mode (for example, u+rwx or u=rw,g=r,o=r).
newline_sequence
string
added in 2.4
    Choices:
  • \n ←
  • \r
  • \r\n
Specify the newline sequence to use for templating files.
output_encoding
string
added in 2.7
 Default:
"utf-8"
Overrides the encoding used to write the template file defined by dest.
It defaults to utf-8, but any encoding supported by python can be used.
The source template file must always be encoded using utf-8, for homogeneity.
owner
string
Name of the user that should own the file/directory, as would be fed to chown.
selevel
string
Default:
"s0"
The level part of the SELinux file context.
This is the MLS/MCS attribute, sometimes known as the range.
When set to _default, it will use the level portion of the policy if available.
serole
string
The role part of the SELinux file context.
When set to _default, it will use the role portion of the policy if available.
setype
string
The type part of the SELinux file context.
When set to _default, it will use the type portion of the policy if available.
seuser
string
The user part of the SELinux file context.
By default it uses the system policy, where applicable.
When set to _default, it will use the user portion of the policy if available.
src
path / required
Path of a Jinja2 formatted template on the Ansible controller.
This can be a relative or an absolute path.
The file must be encoded with utf-8 but output_encoding can be used to control the encoding of the output template.
trim_blocks
boolean
added in 2.4
    Choices:
  • no
  • yes ←
Determine when newlines should be removed from blocks.
When set to yes the first newline after a block is removed (block, not variable tag!).
unsafe_writes
boolean
added in 2.2
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
Influence when to use atomic operation to prevent data corruption or inconsistent reads from the target file.
By default this module uses atomic operations to prevent data corruption or inconsistent reads from the target files, but sometimes systems are configured or just broken in ways that prevent this. One example is docker mounted files, which cannot be updated atomically from inside the container and can only be written in an unsafe manner.
This option allows Ansible to fall back to unsafe methods of updating files when atomic operations fail (however, it doesn't force Ansible to perform unsafe writes).
IMPORTANT! Unsafe writes are subject to race conditions and can lead to data corruption.
validate
string
The validation command to run before copying into place.
The path to the file to validate is passed in via '%s' which must be present as in the examples below.
The command is passed securely so shell features like expansion and pipes will not work.
variable_end_string
string
added in 2.4
 Default:
"}}"
The string marking the end of a print statement.
variable_start_string
string
added in 2.4
 Default:
"{{"
The string marking the beginning of a print statement.

Notes

Note

  • You can use the copy module with the content: option if you prefer the template inline, as part of the playbook.

  • For Windows you can use win_template which uses ‘\r\n’ as newline_sequence by default.

  • Including a string that uses a date in the template will result in the template being marked ‘changed’ each time.

  • Since Ansible 0.9, templates are loaded with trim_blocks=True.

  • Also, you can override jinja2 settings by adding a special header to template file. i.e. #jinja2:variable_start_string:'[%', variable_end_string:'%]', trim_blocks: False which changes the variable interpolation markers to [% var %] instead of {{ var }}. This is the best way to prevent evaluation of things that look like, but should not be Jinja2.

  • Using raw/endraw in Jinja2 will not work as you expect because templates in Ansible are recursively evaluated.

  • To find Byte Order Marks in files, use Format-Hex <file> -Count 16 on Windows, and use od -a -t x1 -N 16 <file> on Linux.

See Also

See also

copy – Copy files to remote locations

The official documentation on the copy module.

win_copy – Copies files to remote locations on windows hosts

The official documentation on the win_copy module.

win_template – Template a file out to a remote server

The official documentation on the win_template module.

Examples

- name: Template a file to /etc/files.conf
  template:
    src: /mytemplates/foo.j2
    dest: /etc/file.conf
    owner: bin
    group: wheel
    mode: '0644'

- name: Template a file, using symbolic modes (equivalent to 0644)
  template:
    src: /mytemplates/foo.j2
    dest: /etc/file.conf
    owner: bin
    group: wheel
    mode: u=rw,g=r,o=r

- name: Copy a version of named.conf that is dependent on the OS. setype obtained by doing ls -Z /etc/named.conf on original file
  template:
    src: named.conf_{{ ansible_os_family}}.j2
    dest: /etc/named.conf
    group: named
    setype: named_conf_t
    mode: 0640

- name: Create a DOS-style text file from a template
  template:
    src: config.ini.j2
    dest: /share/windows/config.ini
    newline_sequence: '\r\n'

- name: Copy a new sudoers file into place, after passing validation with visudo
  template:
    src: /mine/sudoers
    dest: /etc/sudoers
    validate: /usr/sbin/visudo -cf %s

- name: Update sshd configuration safely, avoid locking yourself out
  template:
    src: etc/ssh/sshd_config.j2
    dest: /etc/ssh/sshd_config
    owner: root
    group: root
    mode: '0600'
    validate: /usr/sbin/sshd -t -f %s
    backup: yes

Status

Red Hat Support

More information about Red Hat’s support of this module is available from this Red Hat Knowledge Base article.

Authors

  • Ansible Core Team

  • Michael DeHaan

Hint

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