Looping

Ansible allows you to loop over a list of items. You can reference the current item using the item variable. Looping can get very complex, so we will only cover the basics here. If you are interested in more advanced looping, check out reference at the end of this page.

Loop over a list of items

You can add a list directly in the task and loop over it.

tasks:
  - name: create users
    user:
      name: "{{ item }}"
    loop:
      - alice
      - bob
      - charlie

Loop over a multivalued list

If your list has keys and values, you can reference them using the item.key variable.

- name: Add several users
  ansible.builtin.user:
    name: "{{ item.name }}"
    state: present
    groups: "{{ item.groups }}"
  loop:
    - { name: 'testuser1', groups: 'wheel' }
    - { name: 'testuser2', groups: 'root' }

Loop over a variable

You can also loop over a variable that contains a list.

- name: Add multiple packages
  ansible.builtin.apt:
    name: "{{ item }}"
    state: present
  loop:
    - "{{ packages }}"

Loop over magic variables

You can also loop over magic variables like groups or hostvars.

- name: Show all the hosts in the inventory
  ansible.builtin.debug:
    msg: "{{ item }}"
  loop: "{{ groups['all'] }}"

Control the output if loops

Bt default Ansible will show all properties of the looped items in the output. You can control the console output of loops using the loop_control option.

user:
  name: "{{ item.username }}"
  uid: "{{ item.uid }}"
  home: "{{ item.home }}"
  password: "{{ item.password | password_hash('sha512') }}"
with_items: "{{ csv_users.list }}"
loop_control:
  label: "{{ item.username }}"

Reference

Ansible docs - Loops