Pass array in --extra-vars - Ansible

Question

How can I pass yaml array to --extra-vars in Ansible playbook. Ansible documentation does not declares its syntax nor I can find that on any internet resource.<

Answer 1

To answer your first question "How can I pass yaml array to --extra-vars in Ansible playbook." you can pass in a json formatted string to extra-vars.

Here is an example play:

- hosts: all
  gather_facts: no
  tasks:
    - debug: var=test_list

And how to pass in test_list to ansible-playbook:

ansible-playbook -c local -i localhost, test.yml --extra-vars='{"test_list": [1,2,3]}'

Though you can use a variable for hosts I recommend checking out Ansible's mechanism for host management which is inventory in conjunction with the --limit option.