Ansible Modules

Ansible modules are discrete units of code which can be used from the command line or in a playbook task.

The modules also referred to as task plugins or library plugins in the Ansible.

Ansible ships with several modules that are called module library, which can be executed directly or remote hosts through the playbook.

Users can also write their modules. These modules can control like services, system resources, files, or packages, etc. and handle executing system commands.

Let's see how to execute three different modules from the command line.

Each module supports taking arguments. Mainly all modules take key=value arguments, space delimited.

Some module takes no arguments, and the shell/command modules take the string of the command which you want to execute.

From playbook, Ansible modules execute in a very similar way, such as:

Here is another way to pass arguments to a module that is using YAML syntax, and it is also called complex args.

Technically, all modules return JSON format data, though command line or playbooks, you don't need to know much about that. If you're writing your module, it means you do not have to write modules in any particular language which you get to choose.

Modules should be idempotent and avoid making any changes if they detect that the current state matches the desired final state. When using Ansible playbooks, these modules can trigger "change events" in the form of notifying "handlers" to run additional tasks.

Documentation for each module can be accessed from the command line with the Ansible-doc tool: