Including and Importing

• Includes vs. Imports
• Importing Playbooks
• Including and Importing Task Files
• Including and Importing Roles

Includes vs. Imports

As noted in Creating Reusable Playbooks, include and import statements are very similar, however the Ansible executor engine treats them very differently.

• All import* statements are pre-processed at the time playbooks are parsed.
• All include* statements are processed as they encountered during the execution of the playbook.

Please refer to Creating Reusable Playbooks for documentation concerning the trade-offs one may encounter when using each type.

Also be aware that this behaviour changed in 2.4; prior to that Ansible version only include was available, and it behaved differently depending on context.

Importing Playbooks

It is possible to include playbooks inside a master playbook. For example:

---
- import_playbook: webservers.yml
- import_playbook: databases.yml

The plays and tasks in each playbook listed will be run in the order they are listed, just as if they had been defined here directly.

Prior to 2.4 only include was available and worked for both playbooks and tasks as both import and include.

Including and Importing Task Files

Use of included task lists is a great way to define a role that system is going to fulfill. A task include file simply contains a flat list of tasks:

# common_tasks.yml
---
- name: placeholder foo
  command: /bin/foo
- name: placeholder bar
  command: /bin/bar

You can then use import_tasks or include_tasks to include this file in your main task list:

tasks:
- import_tasks: common_tasks.yml
# or
- include_tasks: common_tasks.yml

You can also pass variables into imports and includes:

tasks:
- import_tasks: wordpress.yml wp_user=timmy
- import_tasks: wordpress.yml wp_user=alice
- import_tasks: wordpress.yml wp_user=bob

Variables can also be passed to include files using an alternative syntax, which also supports structured variables like dictionaries and lists:

tasks:
- include_tasks: wordpress.yml
  vars:
    wp_user: timmy
    ssh_keys:
    - "{{ lookup('file', 'keys/one.pub') }}"
    - "{{ lookup('file', 'keys/two.pub') }}"

Using either syntax, variables passed in can then be used in the included files. These variables will only be available to tasks within the included file. See Variable Precedence: Where Should I Put A Variable? for more details on variable inheritance and precedence.

Task include statements can be used at arbitrary depth.

Includes and imports can also be used in the handlers: section; for instance, if you want to define how to restart apache, you only have to do that once for all of your playbooks. You might make a handlers.yml that looks like:

# more_handlers.yml
---
- name: restart apache
  service: name=apache state=restarted

And in your main playbook file:

handlers:
- include_tasks: more_handlers.yml
# or
- import_tasks: more_handlers.yml

You can mix in includes along with your regular non-included tasks and handlers.

Including and Importing Roles

Please refer to Roles for details on including and importing roles.