ansible.builtin.group_by module – Create Ansible groups based on facts

Note

This module is part of ansible-core and included in all Ansible installations. In most cases, you can use the short module name group_by even without specifying the collections keyword. However, we recommend you use the Fully Qualified Collection Name (FQCN) ansible.builtin.group_by for easy linking to the module documentation and to avoid conflicting with other collections that may have the same module name.

Synopsis

  • Use facts to create ad-hoc groups that can be used later in a playbook.

  • This module is also supported for Windows targets.

Note

This module has a corresponding action plugin.

Parameters

Parameter

Comments

key

string / required

The variables whose values will be used as groups.

parents

list / elements=string

The list of the parent groups.

Default: ["all"]

Attributes

Attribute

Support

Description

action

Support: full

Indicates this has a corresponding action plugin so some parts of the options can be executed on the controller

async

Support: none

Supports being used with the async keyword

become

Support: none

Is usable alongside become keywords

bypass_host_loop

Support: none

Forces a ‘global’ task that does not execute per host, this bypasses per host templating and serial, throttle and other loop considerations

Conditionals will work as if run_once is being used, variables used will be from the first available host

This action will not work normally outside of lockstep strategies

bypass_task_loop

Support: none

These tasks ignore the loop and with_ keywords

check_mode

Support: partial

While this makes no changes to target systems the ‘in memory’ inventory will still be altered

Can run in check_mode and return changed status prediction without modifying target, if not supported the action will be skipped.

connection

Support: none

Uses the target’s configured connection information to execute code on it

core

Support: partial

While parts of this action are implemented in core, other parts are still available as normal plugins and can be partially overridden

This is a ‘core engine’ feature and is not implemented like most task actions, so it is not overridable in any way via the plugin system.

delegation

Support: none

Can be used in conjunction with delegate_to and related keywords

diff_mode

Support: none

Will return details on what has changed (or possibly needs changing in check_mode), when in diff mode

ignore_conditional

Support: none

The action is not subject to conditional execution so it will ignore the when: keyword

platform

Platforms: all

Target OS/families that can be operated against

tags

Support: full

Allows for the ‘tags’ keyword to control the selection of this action for execution

until

Support: full

Denotes if this action obeys until/retry/poll keywords

Notes

Note

  • Spaces in group names are converted to dashes ‘-‘.

  • Though this module does not change the remote host, we do provide ‘changed’ status as it can be useful for those trying to track inventory changes.

See Also

See also

ansible.builtin.add_host

Add a host (and alternatively a group) to the ansible-playbook in-memory inventory.

Examples

- name: Create groups based on the machine architecture
  ansible.builtin.group_by:
    key: machine_{{ ansible_machine }}

- name: Create groups like 'virt_kvm_host'
  ansible.builtin.group_by:
    key: virt_{{ ansible_virtualization_type }}_{{ ansible_virtualization_role }}

- name: Create nested groups
  ansible.builtin.group_by:
    key: el{{ ansible_distribution_major_version }}-{{ ansible_architecture }}
    parents:
      - el{{ ansible_distribution_major_version }}

- name: Add all active hosts to a static group
  ansible.builtin.group_by:
    key: done

Authors

  • Jeroen Hoekx (@jhoekx)