win_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
backup
boolean
added in 2.8
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
Determine whether a backup should be created.
When set to 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.
force
boolean
added in 2.4
    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.
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.
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.
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!).
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

  • Beware fetching files from windows machines when creating templates because certain tools, such as Powershell ISE, and regedit’s export facility add a Byte Order Mark as the first character of the file, which can cause tracebacks.

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

  • For Linux you can use template which uses ‘\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

win_copy – Copies files to remote locations on windows hosts

The official documentation on the win_copy module.

copy – Copy files to remote locations

The official documentation on the copy module.

template – Template a file out to a remote server

The official documentation on the template module.

Examples

- name: Create a file from a Jinja2 template
  win_template:
    src: /mytemplates/file.conf.j2
    dest: C:\Temp\file.conf

- name: Create a Unix-style file from a Jinja2 template
  win_template:
    src: unix/config.conf.j2
    dest: C:\share\unix\config.conf
    newline_sequence: '\n'
    backup: yes

Return Values

Common return values are documented here, the following are the fields unique to this module:

Key Returned Description
backup_file
string
if backup=yes
Name of the backup file that was created.

Sample:
C:\Path\To\File.txt.11540.20150212-220915.bak


Status

Red Hat Support

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

Authors

  • Jon Hawkesworth (@jhawkesworth)

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