ansible.builtin.env lookup – Read the value of environment variables

Note

This lookup plugin is part of ansible-core and included in all Ansible installations. In most cases, you can use the short plugin name env. However, we recommend you use the Fully Qualified Collection Name (FQCN) ansible.builtin.env for easy linking to the plugin documentation and to avoid conflicting with other collections that may have the same lookup plugin name.

Synopsis

  • Allows you to query the environment variables available on the controller when you invoked Ansible.

Terms

Parameter

Comments

Terms

string / required

Environment variable or list of them to lookup the values for.

Keyword parameters

This describes keyword parameters of the lookup. These are the values key1=value1, key2=value2 and so on in the following examples: lookup('ansible.builtin.env', key1=value1, key2=value2, ...) and query('ansible.builtin.env', key1=value1, key2=value2, ...)

Parameter

Comments

default

any

added in ansible-core 2.13

What return when the variable is undefined

Default: ""

Notes

Note

  • When keyword and positional parameters are used together, positional parameters must be listed before keyword parameters: lookup('ansible.builtin.env', term1, term2, key1=value1, key2=value2) and query('ansible.builtin.env', term1, term2, key1=value1, key2=value2)
  • You can pass the Undefined object as default to force an undefined error

Examples

- name: Basic usage
  ansible.builtin.debug:
    msg: "'{{ lookup('ansible.builtin.env', 'HOME') }}' is the HOME environment variable."

- name: Before 2.13, how to set default value if the variable is not defined.
        This cannot distinguish between USR undefined and USR=''.
  ansible.builtin.debug:
    msg: "{{ lookup('ansible.builtin.env', 'USR')|default('nobody', True) }} is the user."

- name: Example how to set default value if the variable is not defined, ignores USR=''
  ansible.builtin.debug:
    msg: "{{ lookup('ansible.builtin.env', 'USR', default='nobody') }} is the user."

- name: Set default value to Undefined, if the variable is not defined
  ansible.builtin.debug:
    msg: "{{ lookup('ansible.builtin.env', 'USR', default=Undefined) }} is the user."

- name: Set default value to undef(), if the variable is not defined
  ansible.builtin.debug:
    msg: "{{ lookup('ansible.builtin.env', 'USR', default=undef()) }} is the user."

Return Value

Key

Description

Return value

list / elements=string

Values from the environment variables.

Returned: success

Authors

  • Jan-Piet Mens (@jpmens) <jpmens(at)gmail.com>

Hint

Configuration entries for each entry type have a low to high priority order. For example, a variable that is lower in the list will override a variable that is higher up.

© 2012–2018 Michael DeHaan
© 2018–2024 Red Hat, Inc.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/ansible/builtin/env_lookup.html