This in-depth dive helps you understand Ansible’s program flow to execute modules. It is written for people working on the portions of the Core Ansible Engine that execute a module. Those writing Ansible Modules may also find this in-depth dive to be of interest, but individuals simply using Ansible Modules will not likely find this to be helpful.
Ansible supports several different types of modules in its code base. Some of these are for backwards compatibility and others are to enable flexibility.
Action Plugins look like modules to end users who are writing playbooks but
they’re distinct entities for the purposes of this document. Action Plugins
always execute on the controller and are sometimes able to do all work there
(for instance, the debug Action Plugin which prints some text for the user to
see or the assert Action Plugin which can test whether several values in
a playbook satisfy certain criteria.)
More often, Action Plugins set up some values on the controller, then invoke an actual module on the managed node that does something with these values. An easy to understand version of this is the template Action Plugin. The template Action Plugin takes values from the user to construct a file in a temporary location on the controller using variables from the playbook environment. It then transfers the temporary file to a temporary file on the remote system. After that, it invokes the copy module which operates on the remote system to move the file into its final location, sets file permissions, and so on.
All of the modules that ship with Ansible fall into this category.
New-style modules have the arguments to the module embedded inside of them in some manner. Non-new-style modules must copy a separate file over to the managed node, which is less efficient as it requires two over-the-wire connections instead of only one.
New-style Python modules use the Ansiballz framework for constructing modules. All official modules (shipped with Ansible) use either this or the powershell module framework.
These modules use imports from ansible.module_utils in order to pull in
boilerplate module code, such as argument parsing, formatting of return
values as JSON, and various file operations.
Note
In Ansible, up to version 2.0.x, the official Python modules used the Module Replacer framework. For module authors, Ansiballz is largely a superset of Module Replacer functionality, so you usually do not need to know about one versus the other.
New-style powershell modules use the Module Replacer framework for constructing modules. These modules get a library of powershell code embedded in them before being sent to the managed node.
Scripts can arrange for an argument string to be placed within them by placing
the string <<INCLUDE_ANSIBLE_MODULE_JSON_ARGS>> somewhere inside of the
file. The module typically sets a variable to that value like this:
json_arguments = """<<INCLUDE_ANSIBLE_MODULE_JSON_ARGS>>"""
Which is expanded as:
json_arguments = """{"param1": "test's quotes", "param2": "\"To be or not to be\" - Hamlet"}"""
Note
Ansible outputs a JSON string with bare quotes. Double quotes are used to quote string values, double quotes inside of string values are backslash escaped, and single quotes may appear unescaped inside of a string value. To use JSONARGS, your scripting language must have a way to handle this type of string. The example uses Python’s triple quoted strings to do this. Other scripting languages may have a similar quote character that won’t be confused by any quotes in the JSON or it may allow you to define your own start-of-quote and end-of-quote characters. If the language doesn’t give you any of these then you’ll need to write a non-native JSON module or Old-style module instead.
The module typically parses the contents of json_arguments using a JSON
library and then use them as native variables throughout the rest of its code.
If a module has the string WANT_JSON in it anywhere, Ansible treats
it as a non-native module that accepts a filename as its only command line
parameter. The filename is for a temporary file containing a JSON
string containing the module’s parameters. The module needs to open the file,
read and parse the parameters, operate on the data, and print its return data
as a JSON encoded dictionary to stdout before exiting.
These types of modules are self-contained entities. As of Ansible 2.1, Ansible only modifies them to change a shebang line if present.
See also
Examples of Non-native modules written in ruby are in the Ansible for Rubyists repository.
From Ansible 2.2 onwards, modules may also be small binary programs. Ansible doesn’t perform any magic to make these portable to different systems so they may be specific to the system on which they were compiled or require other binary runtime dependencies. Despite these drawbacks, a site may sometimes have no choice but to compile a custom module against a specific binary library if that’s the only way they have to get access to certain resources.
Binary modules take their arguments and will return data to Ansible in the same way as want JSON modules.
See also
One example of a binary module written in go.
Old-style modules are similar to
want JSON modules, except that the file that
they take contains key=value pairs for their parameters instead of
JSON.
Ansible decides that a module is old-style when it doesn’t have any of the markers that would show that it is one of the other types.
When a user uses ansible or ansible-playbook, they specify a task to execute. The task is usually the name of a module along with several parameters to be passed to the module. Ansible takes these values and processes them in various ways before they are finally executed on the remote machine.
The TaskExecutor receives the module name and parameters that were parsed from the playbook (or from the command line in the case of /usr/bin/ansible). It uses the name to decide whether it’s looking at a module or an Action Plugin. If it’s a module, it loads the Normal Action Plugin and passes the name, variables, and other information about the task and play to that Action Plugin for further processing.
The normal Action Plugin executes the module on the remote host. It is
the primary coordinator of much of the work to actually execute the module on
the managed machine.
Connection class according to the inventory
configuration for that host.no_log to the module).Much of this functionality comes from the BaseAction class,
which lives in plugins/action/__init__.py. It makes use of
Connection and Shell objects to do its work.
Note
When tasks are run with the async: parameter, Ansible
uses the async Action Plugin instead of the normal Action Plugin
to invoke it. That program flow is currently not documented. Read the
source for information on how that works.
Code in executor/module_common.py takes care of assembling the module
to be shipped to the managed node. The module is first read in, then examined
to determine its type. PowerShell and
JSON-args modules are passed through
Module Replacer. New-style
Python modules are assembled by Ansiballz.
Non-native-want-JSON,
Binary modules, and
Old-Style modules aren’t touched by either of
these and pass through unchanged. After the assembling step, one final
modification is made to all modules that have a shebang line. Ansible checks
whether the interpreter in the shebang line has a specific path configured via
an ansible_$X_interpreter inventory variable. If it does, Ansible
substitutes that path for the interpreter path given in the module. After
this, Ansible returns the complete module data and the module type to the
Normal Action which continues execution of
the module.
Next we’ll go into some details of the two assembler frameworks.
The Module Replacer framework is the original framework implementing new-style modules. It is essentially a preprocessor (like the C Preprocessor for those familiar with that programming language). It does straight substitutions of specific substring patterns in the module file. There are two types of substitutions:
from ansible.module_utils.MOD_LIB_NAME import * is replaced with the
contents of the ansible/module_utils/MOD_LIB_NAME.py These should
only be used with new-style Python modules.#<<INCLUDE_ANSIBLE_MODULE_COMMON>> is equivalent to
from ansible.module_utils.basic import * and should also only apply
to new-style Python modules.# POWERSHELL_COMMON substitutes the contents of
ansible/module_utils/powershell.ps1. It should only be used with
new-style Powershell modules.ansible.module_utils code. These are internal
replacement patterns. They may be used internally, in the above public
replacements, but shouldn’t be used directly by modules."<<ANSIBLE_VERSION>>" is substituted with the Ansible version. In
new-style Python modules under the
Ansiballz framework the proper way is to instead instantiate an
AnsibleModule and then access the version from
:attr:AnsibleModule.ansible_version."<<INCLUDE_ANSIBLE_MODULE_COMPLEX_ARGS>>" is substituted with
a string which is the Python repr of the JSON encoded module
parameters. Using repr on the JSON string makes it safe to embed in
a Python file. In new-style Python modules under the Ansiballz framework
this is better accessed by instantiating an AnsibleModule and
then using AnsibleModule.params.<<SELINUX_SPECIAL_FILESYSTEMS>> substitutes a string which is
a comma separated list of file systems which have a file system dependent
security context in SELinux. In new-style Python modules, if you really
need this you should instantiate an AnsibleModule and then use
AnsibleModule._selinux_special_fs. The variable has also changed
from a comma separated string of file system names to an actual python
list of filesystem names.<<INCLUDE_ANSIBLE_MODULE_JSON_ARGS>> substitutes the module
parameters as a JSON string. Care must be taken to properly quote the
string as JSON data may contain quotes. This pattern is not substituted
in new-style Python modules as they can get the module parameters another
way.syslog.LOG_USER is replaced wherever it occurs with the
syslog_facility which was named in ansible.cfg or any
ansible_syslog_facility inventory variable that applies to this host. In
new-style Python modules this has changed slightly. If you really need to
access it, you should instantiate an AnsibleModule and then use
AnsibleModule._syslog_facility to access it. It is no longer the
actual syslog facility and is now the name of the syslog facility. See
the documentation on internal arguments
for details.Ansible 2.1 switched from the Module Replacer framework to the
Ansiballz framework for assembling modules. The Ansiballz framework differs
from module replacer in that it uses real Python imports of things in
ansible/module_utils instead of merely preprocessing the module. It
does this by constructing a zipfile – which includes the module file, files
in ansible/module_utils that are imported by the module, and some
boilerplate to pass in the module’s parameters. The zipfile is then Base64
encoded and wrapped in a small Python script which decodes the Base64 encoding
and places the zipfile into a temp directory on the managed node. It then
extracts just the ansible module script from the zip file and places that in
the temporary directory as well. Then it sets the PYTHONPATH to find python
modules inside of the zip file and invokes python on the extracted
ansible module.
Note
Ansible wraps the zipfile in the Python script for two reasons:
-m command line switch.In Ansiballz, any imports of Python modules from the
ansible.module_utils package trigger inclusion of that Python file
into the zipfile. Instances of #<<INCLUDE_ANSIBLE_MODULE_COMMON>> in
the module are turned into from ansible.module_utils.basic import *
and ansible/module-utils/basic.py is then included in the zipfile.
Files that are included from module_utils are themselves scanned for
imports of other Python modules from module_utils to be included in
the zipfile as well.
Warning
At present, the Ansiballz Framework cannot determine whether an import
should be included if it is a relative import. Always use an absolute
import that has ansible.module_utils in it to allow Ansiballz to
determine that the file should be included.
In Module Replacer, module arguments are turned into a JSON-ified
string and substituted into the combined module file. In Ansiballz,
the JSON-ified string is passed into the module via stdin. When
a ansible.module_utils.basic.AnsibleModule is instantiated,
it parses this string and places the args into
AnsibleModule.params where it can be accessed by the module’s
other code.
Note
Internally, the AnsibleModule uses the helper function,
ansible.module_utils.basic._load_params(), to load the parameters
from stdin and save them into an internal global variable. Very dynamic
custom modules which need to parse the parameters prior to instantiating
an AnsibleModule may use _load_params to retrieve the
parameters. Be aware that _load_params is an internal function and
may change in breaking ways if necessary to support changes in the code.
However, we’ll do our best not to break it gratuitously, which is not
something that can be said for either the way parameters are passed or
the internal global variable.
Both Module Replacer and Ansiballz send additional arguments to
the module beyond those which the user specified in the playbook. These
additional arguments are internal parameters that help implement global
Ansible features. Modules often do not need to know about these explicitly as
the features are implemented in ansible.module_utils.basic but certain
features need support from the module so it’s good to know about them.
This is a boolean. If it’s True then the playbook specified no_log (in
a task’s parameters or as a play parameter). This automatically affects calls
to AnsibleModule.log(). If a module implements its own logging then
it needs to check this value. The best way to look at this is for the module
to instantiate an AnsibleModule and then check the value of
AnsibleModule.no_log.
Note
no_log specified in a module’s argument_spec are handled by a different mechanism.
This is a boolean that turns on more verbose logging. If a module uses
AnsibleModule.debug() rather than AnsibleModule.log() then
the messages are only logged if this is True. This also turns on logging of
external commands that the module executes. This can be changed via
the debug setting in ansible.cfg or the environment variable
ANSIBLE_DEBUG. If, for some reason, a module must access this, it
should do so by instantiating an AnsibleModule and accessing
AnsibleModule._debug.
This boolean is turned on via the --diff command line option. If a module
supports it, it will tell the module to show a unified diff of changes to be
made to templated files. The proper way for a module to access this is by
instantiating an AnsibleModule and accessing
AnsibleModule._diff.
This value could be used for finer grained control over logging. However, it is currently unused.
This is a list of names of filesystems which should have a special selinux
context. They are used by the AnsibleModule methods which operate on
files (changing attributes, moving, and copying). The list of names is set
via a comma separated string of filesystem names from ansible.cfg:
# ansible.cfg
[selinux]
special_context_filesystems=nfs,vboxsf,fuse,ramfs
If a module cannot use the builtin AnsibleModule methods to manipulate
files and needs to know about these special context filesystems, it should
instantiate an AnsibleModule and then examine the list in
AnsibleModule._selinux_special_fs.
This replaces ansible.module_utils.basic.SELINUX_SPECIAL_FS from
Module Replacer. In module replacer it was a comma separated string of
filesystem names. Under Ansiballz it’s an actual list.
New in version 2.1.
This parameter controls which syslog facility ansible module logs to. It may
be set by changing the syslog_facility value in ansible.cfg. Most
modules should just use AnsibleModule.log() which will then make use of
this. If a module has to use this on its own, it should instantiate an
AnsibleModule and then retrieve the name of the syslog facility from
AnsibleModule._syslog_facility. The code will look slightly different
than it did under Module Replacer due to how hacky the old way was
# Old way
import syslog
syslog.openlog(NAME, 0, syslog.LOG_USER)
# New way
import syslog
facility_name = module._syslog_facility
facility = getattr(syslog, facility_name, syslog.LOG_USER)
syslog.openlog(NAME, 0, facility)
New in version 2.1.
This parameter passes the version of ansible that runs the module. To access
it, a module should instantiate an AnsibleModule and then retrieve it
from AnsibleModule.ansible_version. This replaces
ansible.module_utils.basic.ANSIBLE_VERSION from
Module Replacer.
New in version 2.1.
Ansible can transfer a module to a remote machine in one of two ways:
Pipelining only works with modules written in Python at this time because Ansible only knows that Python supports this mode of operation. Supporting pipelining means that whatever format the module payload takes before being sent over the wire must be executable by Python via stdin.
Passing arguments via stdin was chosen for the following reasons: