Vars Plugins — Ansible Documentation

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# Vars Plugins

- Enabling vars plugins
- Using vars plugins
- Plugin Lists

Vars plugins inject additional variable data into Ansible runs that did not come from an inventory source, playbook, or command line. Playbook constructs like ‘host_vars’ and ‘group_vars’ work using vars plugins.

Vars plugins were partially implemented in Ansible 2.0 and rewritten to be fully implemented starting with Ansible 2.4.

The host_group_vars plugin shipped with Ansible enables reading variables from Assigning a variable to one machine: host variables and Assigning a variable to many machines: group variables.

## Enabling vars plugins

You can activate a custom vars plugin by either dropping it into a `vars_plugins` directory adjacent to your play, inside a role, or by putting it in one of the directory sources configured in ansible.cfg.

## Using vars plugins

Vars plugins are used automatically after they are enabled.

## Plugin Lists

You can use `ansible-doc -t vars -l` to see the list of available plugins. Use `ansible-doc -t vars <plugin name>` to see specific plugin-specific documentation and examples.

See also

Action Plugins
  Ansible Action plugins
Cache Plugins
  Ansible Cache plugins
Callback Plugins
  Ansible callback plugins
Connection Plugins
  Ansible connection plugins
Inventory Plugins
  Ansible inventory plugins
Shell Plugins
  Ansible Shell plugins
Strategy Plugins
  Ansible Strategy plugins
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