foreman-ansible-inventory 0.0.4

foreman_ansible_inventory
=========================

[](https://travis-ci.org/theforeman/foreman_ansible_inventory)

This script can be used as an Ansible dynamic inventory[1].
The connection parameters are set up via a configuration
file *foreman.ini*. *foreman.ini* is found using the following
order of discovery.

* `/etc/ansible/foreman.ini`
* Current directory of your inventory script.
* `FOREMAN_INI_PATH` environment variable.

## Variables and Parameters

The data returned from Foreman for each host is stored in a foreman
hash so they're available as *host_vars* along with the parameters
of the host and it's hostgroups:

"foo.example.com": {
"foreman": {
"architecture_id": 1,
"architecture_name": "x86_64",
"build": false,
"build_status": 0,
"build_status_label": "Installed",
"capabilities": [
"build",
"image"
],
"compute_profile_id": 4,
"hostgroup_name": "webtier/myapp",
"id": 70,
"image_name": "debian8.1",
...
"uuid": "50197c10-5ebb-b5cf-b384-a1e203e19e77"
},
"foreman_params": {
"testparam1": "foobar",
"testparam2": "small",
...
}

and could therefore be used in Ansible like:

- debug: msg="From Foreman host {{ foreman['uuid'] }}"

Which yields

TASK [test_foreman : debug] ****************************************************
ok: [foo.example.com] => {
"msg": "From Foreman host 50190bd1-052a-a34a-3c9c-df37a39550bf"
}

## Automatic Ansible groups

The inventory will provide a set of groups, by default prefixed by
'foreman_'. If you want to customize this prefix, change the
group_prefix option in /etc/ansible/foreman.ini. The rest of this
guide will assume the default prefix of 'foreman'

The hostgroup, location, organization, content view, and lifecycle
environment of each host are created as Ansible groups with a
foreman_<grouptype> prefix, all lowercase and problematic parameters
removed. So e.g. the foreman hostgroup

myapp / webtier / datacenter1

would turn into the Ansible group:

foreman_hostgroup_myapp_webtier_datacenter1

Furthermore Ansible groups can be created on the fly using the
*group_patterns* variable in *foreman.ini* so that you can build up
hierarchies using parameters on the hostgroup and host variables.

Lets assume you have a host that is built using this nested hostgroup:

myapp / webtier / datacenter1

and each of the hostgroups defines a parameters respectively:

myapp: app_param = myapp
webtier: tier_param = webtier
datacenter1: dc_param = datacenter1

The host is also in a subnet called "mysubnet" and provisioned via an image
then *group_patterns* like:

[ansible]
group_patterns = ["{app_param}-{tier_param}-{dc_param}",
"{app_param}-{tier_param}",
"{app_param}",
"{subnet_name}-{provision_method}"]

would put the host into the additional Ansible groups:

- myapp-webtier-datacenter1
- myapp-webtier
- myapp
- mysubnet-image

by recursively resolving the hostgroups, getting the parameter keys
and values and doing a Python *string.format()* like replacement on
it.

[1]: http://docs.ansible.com/intro_dynamic_inventory.html