Raymii.org

Table of Contents

• Dummy inventory file
• Testing
• Testing all the playbooks

This Ansible article shows you how to run a basic test on your playbooks to check if their syntax is correct. It shows methods for both Ansible 1.3 and 1.4. When you get more complicated Ansible playbooks you sometimes have syntax (YAML) errors in them. It sometimes can take a while before those errors show up because they are lower in a playbook. By running the syntax check you make sure this won't happen.

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Dummy inventory file

Lets say your playbooks are located in /home/username/ansible/playbooks. You have a few roles and a few playbooks. To test them, we need a dummy ansible_hosts file. Create it:

cd ~/ansible/
mkdir tests/
vim tests/ansible_hosts

Put this in the file:

[local]
127.0.0.1

Note that when executing the tasks it will not actually execute them on your local machine. It only does a syntax check.

Testing

Use the --syntax-check and -list-tasks options, plus the dummy inventory file to do a full syntax check, including all includes roles and task files:

ansible-playbook --syntax-check --list-tasks -i tests/ansible_hosts
./example-playbook.yml

If there are no errors, you will get a list of tasks which the playbook wil execute:

playbook: ./playbooks/default-vps-setup.yml

  play #1 (local):
    apt name={{item}} state=latest update_cache=yes
    apt pkg={{item}} state=absent
    template src=localegen.j2 dest=/etc/locale.gen
    template src=localepurge.j2 dest=/etc/locale.nopurge
    template src=timezone.j2 dest=/etc/timezone
    template src=issue.net.j2 dest=/etc/issue.net
    template src=issue.net.j2 dest=/etc/issue
    template src=hostname.j2 dest=/etc/hostname

If you have an error it will show up in red:

ansible-playbook --syntax-check --list-tasks -i tests/ansible_hosts
./playbooks/default-vps-setup.yml

playbook: ./playbooks/default-vps-setup.yml

ERROR: Syntax Error while loading YAML script,
/home/remy/ansible/playbooks/roles/vim/tasks/main.yml Note: The error may
actually appear before this position: line 3, column 7

-dfi://dsf;apt: pkg=vim-tiny state=latest update_cache=yes
  sudo: yes

Testing all the playbooks

My ansible git repository is set up like so:

 $ tree -L 3

|-- ansible_hosts
|-- ci.sh
|-- playbooks
|   |-- debug.yml
|   |-- default-vps-setup.yml
|   |-- group_vars
|   |   |-- all.yml
|   |   |-- apache-php.yml
|   |   |-- lighttpd-php.yml
|   |   |-- desktop-awesome.yml
|   |   `-- nginx-php.yml
|   |-- nginx-vps.yml
|   `-- roles
       |-- bash
|       |   `-- tasks
|       |-- basic-debian-setup
|       |   |-- files
|       |   |-- tasks
|       |   `-- templates
[...]
|       |-- vim
|       `-- vnstat
`-- tests
    `-- ansible_hosts

As you can see my playbooks are in the playbooks folder. To test all the playbooks I use the following find command piped trough to ansible:

find ./playbooks -name '*.yml' -depth 1 | xargs -n1  ansible-playbook
--syntax-check --list-tasks -i tests/ansible_hosts

The -depth 1 makes sure only playbooks are tested, testing task or variable files will fail.

You can very easily add this setup to Jenkins or any other CI. I have my playbooks in Jenkins, a simple bash script named ci.sh is used as the only test step:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -o errexit
set -o nounset
# set -o xtrace
set -o pipefail

__DIR__="$(cd "$(dirname "${0}")"; echo $(pwd))"
__BASE__="$(basename "${0}")"
__FILE__="${__DIR__}/${__BASE__}"

echo "################################"
echo "Build Information"
echo "Directory: ${__DIR__}"
echo "Filename: ${__FILE__}"
echo "Version Information:"
echo "Ansible Version: $(ansible --version)"
echo "Ansible Playbook Version: $(ansible-playbook --version)"
echo "Operating System: $(lsb_release -d | awk -F: '{ print $2 }' | tr -d '\t')"
echo "Kernel: $(uname -a)"
echo "################################"

echo "### Starting tests"

find ./playbooks -maxdepth 1 -name '*.yml'| xargs -n1  ansible-playbook
--syntax-check --list-tasks -i tests/ansible_hosts

Tags: ansible , configuration-management , deployment , devops , python , syntax , testing , tests , tutorials , yaml