Automatic way to find where variables are coming from in Ansible

Giovanni Tirloni

9/16/23, 9:57 AM

Whenever I have to change something in our Ansible repository, I have to check all the places where a variable could be set and that's very time consuming.

Is there something that would show me something like "the varialbe X being used in this template file is defined is all these places for host Y"?

0 + 0

ansible

ansible-playbook

Vladimir Botka

9/16/23, 10:11 AM

No. It is not. It's up to you to keep track of [where the variables are coming from](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/playbooks_variables.html#variable-precedence-where-should-i-put-a-variable). In fact, asking this question indicates that something is wrong with the structure of the data.

Giovanni Tirloni

9/17/23, 11:01 AM

thanks for your useful answer, much appreciated

Vladimir Botka

9/17/23, 12:04 PM

Post your [mre](https://stackoverflow.com/help/minimal-reproducible-example) problem, instead. There might be options on how to improve the structure of the data or how to efficiently debug issues.

Zeitounator

9/21/23, 7:49 PM

Using an IDE with decent search functionalities should make this a breeze. Example for pycharm which I usually use for ansible development. Hitting `ctrl-shift-F`, selecting 'In project" and entering "my_variable_name:" (note the ending column) immediately gives me the list of files and the lines where that variable is set. The documentation site proposes a [list of IDEs and plugins](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/community/other_tools_and_programs.html#popular-editors). Looking with grep is also a simple option: from your project root => `grep -Rn "my_variable_name:" *`

Score:1

Server

hille721

4/14/24, 2:28 PM

We had a similar problem in our company. Very large inventory where it was hard to keep track where a variable is defined and what "wins" (https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/playbook_guide/playbooks_variables.html#understanding-variable-precedence)

I have written a simple tool to solve that: https://github.com/hille721/ansible-variables

But this only works for host context variables yet, thus not for playbook or role variables

+ 0

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: Automatic way to find where variables are coming from in Ansible

TH: วิธีอัตโนมัติในการค้นหาว่าตัวแปรมาจากที่ใดใน Ansible

RO: Mod automat de a găsi de unde provin variabilele în Ansible

RU: Автоматический способ найти, откуда берутся переменные в Ansible

VI: Cách tự động để tìm nơi các biến đến từ Ansible

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