Conditionally define variable in Ansible

Question

I want to conditionally define a variable in an Ansible playbook like this:

my_var: \"{{ \'foo\' if my_condition}}\"
         


        

Answer 1

My example, after https://stackoverflow.com/a/43403229/5025060:

vars:
    sudoGroup: "{{ 'sudo' if ansible_distribution == 'Ubuntu' else 'wheel' }}"

Because of the different sudo conventions used by Ubuntu versus other platforms, here I am telling Ansible to set a variable named sudoGroup to sudo if the platform is Ubuntu, otherwise set it to wheel.

Later in my playbook, I combine the variable with Ansible's user module to add either sudo or wheel to an account's secondary groups depending on the OS Ansible is running on:

- name: Add or update bob account
  user:
    name: bob
    uid: 3205
    groups: "{{ sudoGroup }}"
    append: yes

NOTES:

• Double quotes around the {{ variable }} are required in the user: groups: definition above.
• Once I define sudoGroup as above in my playbook's global vars: section, Ansible configures it at run time (based on ansible_distribution) for each target I define in my hosts: section.