Set Ansible Variables from the Command Line

If you ever wanted pass in ‘parameters’ to your Ansible playbooks via the command line when you are running the playbook through ansible-playbook here is the way to do it.

Command line

ansible-playbook --extra-vars '{"NODE_ENV":"staging","GIT_BRANCH":"develop"}' playbook.yml

or the shorter version (thanks mpdehaan)

ansible-playbook "-e 'NODE_ENV=staging GIT_BRANCH=develop'" playbook.yml

Here you are setting NODE_ENV and GIT_BRANCH variables (if it wasn’t obvious).

Now inside your playbook you will have something like the following

- name: Node apps deploy
  hosts: all
  gather_facts: no
  vars:
    git_branch: "{{ GIT_BRANCH|default('develop') }}"
    node_env: "{{ NODE_ENV|default('staging') }}"
  tasks:
    - command echo "{{ node_env }}"
    - command echo "{{ git_branch }}"

That’s about it.

Update: Use a shorter version of the ansible-playbook command when passing in extra-vars. As pointed out by mpdehaan (thanks!!).