Ansible blocks provide a convenient way to logically group tasks. So it is unfortunate that native Ansible syntax does not allow looping to be combined with a block. Consider the simple conditional block below controlled by a variable ‘do_block_logic’:
- name: simple block with conditional
block:
- name: simple block task1
debug: msg="hello"
- name: simple block task2
debug: msg="world"
when: do_block_logic|bool
It would be nice to simply add a ‘loop’ or ‘with_items’ that would loop on this block and provide access to an {{item}} from within these tasks. But this Ansible syntax does not exist, so we have to construct a syntax as described by Eric Anderson where we use loop and include_tasks.
- name: calling block with conditional on loop include_tasks: conditional_block.yml loop: ['world','universe']
Then your block is defined in a file ‘conditional_block.yml’
- name: included block with conditional
block:
- name: included block task1
debug: msg="hello"
- name: included block task2
debug: msg="{{item}}"
when: do_block_logic|bool
Which allows access to {{item}} from within the block tasks.
A full example is provided at playbook-block-loop.yml.
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