ansible.builtin.file – read file contents

Note

This module is part of ansible-base and included in all Ansible installations. In most cases, you can use the short module name file even without specifying the collections: keyword. Despite that, we recommend you use the FQCN for easy linking to the module documentation and to avoid conflicting with other collections that may have the same module name.

New in version 0.9: of ansible.builtin

Synopsis
Parameters
Notes
Examples
Return Values

Synopsis

This lookup returns the contents from a file on the Ansible controller’s file system.

Parameters

Parameter	Choices/Defaults	Comments
_terms string / required		path(s) of files to read
lstrip boolean	no ← yes	whether or not to remove whitespace from the beginning of the looked-up file
rstrip boolean	no yes ←	whether or not to remove whitespace from the ending of the looked-up file

Notes

Note

if read in variable context, the file can be interpreted as YAML if the content is valid to the parser.
this lookup does not understand ‘globing’, use the fileglob lookup instead.

Examples

- debug: msg="the value of foo.txt is {{lookup('file', '/etc/foo.txt') }}"

- name: display multiple file contents
  debug: var=item
  with_file:
    - "/path/to/foo.txt"
    - "bar.txt"  # will be looked in files/ dir relative to play or in role
    - "/path/to/biz.txt"

Return Values

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

Key	Returned	Description
_raw list / elements=string	success	content of file(s)

Authors

Daniel Hokka Zakrisson (!UNKNOWN) <[email protected]>

© 2012–2018 Michael DeHaan
© 2018–2019 Red Hat, Inc.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/2.10/collections/ansible/builtin/file_lookup.html