Accessing inventory host variable in Ansible playbook

Question

In Ansible 2.1, I have a role being called by a playbook that needs access to a host file variable. Any thoughts on how to access it?

I am trying to access the ansible_ssh_host in the test1 section of the following inventory host file:

[test1]
test-1 ansible_ssh_host=abc.def.ghi.jkl ansible_ssh_port=1212

[test2]
test2-1 ansible_ssh_host=abc.def.ghi.mno ansible_ssh_port=1212

[test3]
test3-1 ansible_ssh_host=abc.def.ghi.pqr ansible_ssh_port=1212
test3-2 ansible_ssh_host=abc.def.ghi.stu ansible_ssh_port=1212

[all:children]
test1
test2
test3

I have tried accessing the role in the following fashions:

{{ hostvars.ansible_ssh_host }} 

and

{{ hostvars.test1.ansible_ssh_host }}

I get this error:

fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"failed": true, "msg": "'ansible.vars.hostvars.HostVars object' has no attribute 'ansible'"}

Answer 1

You are on the right track about hostvars.
This magic variable is used to access information about other hosts.

hostvars is a hash with inventory hostnames as keys.
To access fields of each host, use hostvars['test-1'], hostvars['test2-1'], etc.

ansible_ssh_host is deprecated in favor of ansible_host since 2.0.
So you should first remove "_ssh" from inventory hosts arguments (i.e. to become "ansible_user", "ansible_host", and "ansible_port"), then in your role call it with:

{{ hostvars['your_host_group'].ansible_host }}