Do you have existing ansible playbooks you want to use in Juju Charms? This library works in tandem with layer:ansible to deliver a consistent Ansible with juju experience. Just bring your playbooks and operational knowledge.

This library offers two methods: method 1 is based on calling ansible-playbook CLI, where method 2 is using Ansible Python API.

This module handles installing ansible from ppa:ansible/ansible by default. This is tuneable when calling install_ansible to point to a different PPA if required

from charms.ansible import install_ansible_support

@when_not('ansible.available')
def bootstrap_with_ansible():
   install_ansible_support('ppa:rquillo/ansible')

By default, ansible is setup to apply against localhost. By this convention we also have a cache of all the unit data that charms.ansible is aware of in /etc/ansible/host_vars/localhost. Additionally, playbooks are executed filtered by tags when you need to group actions to a similar event.

This code would reside in your charms reactive module: reactive/somefile.py

from charms.ansible import apply_playbook

@when('ansible.available')
def run_playbook():
    apply_playbook('files/playbook.yaml')

Invoking Ansible against this yaml

- hosts: localhost
  vars:
    - service_name: "{{ local_unit.split('/')[0] }}"
  tasks:
    - include: tasks/install-widgets.yml
      tags:
        - ansible.available

Notice the filter of tags - Tags are executed in or fashion by default. Meaning if any tags match, the associated play is executed.

Caveat - Due to this pattern, if you attempt to apply_playbook() on a playbook that is tagged, and there is no matching tag in the environment, it will raise an error. Great care should be taken to not encounter codepaths in this nature.

Charm configuration is passed implicitly into rendering contexts when called from an Ansible playbook, and can be referenced directly.

Example config.yaml

options:
  version_number:
    type: string
    default: v2.0.15
    description: Version number of widget to fetch
  profile:
    type: string
    default: fast
    description: Deployment profile to render

Example tasks/install_widgets.yaml for inline config variable expansion

tasks:
  - include: tasks/install_widget_{{version_number}}.yaml
    tags:
      - widget.notinstalled
  - name: Update configuration
    template: src={{ charm_dir }}/templates/widget_config.toml
              dest=/etc/widget/config.yml
              mode=0644
              backup=yes
    notify:
      - Restart Widget

Example templates/widget_config.toml - Jinja2 template can make direct reference to config in the template being rendered, when invoked from an ansible template play.

{% if profile %}
tuning_profile={{ profile }}
{% endif %}

This library is heavilly based (right now its a direct fork) of mnelson's work on charmhelpers.contrib.ansible module. Charms have evolved a long way since that was a 'gold standard'. This is an attempt at resurrecting that work and continuing the learning of using Ansible in Juju.

Major thanks to the early contributors, bug filers, and adopters of this great library. This wouldn't be possible without it!

Design objectives:

1. Design as reusable layer(s)
2. Be compatible with Ubuntu and CentOS
3. Simple pattern to execute a playbook

Assumption:

1. Playbooks will be local (in charm) so to maintain the atomic nature of a HW charm — the model contains both the declaration of attributes and actions to handle runtime state transitions.

This method is inspired by this article. This is to take advantage of the Ansible Python API.

1. Install prerequisites. Installing Ansible will fail on a vanilla Ubuntu because it misses a few dependencies. Using layer-basic by listing them out in layer.yaml:

   includes:
     - 'layer:basic'
   options:
     basic:
       packages:
         - libffi-dev
         - libssl-dev
         - python
         - python3-dev

2. Install Ansible. Use Python wheel supported by layer-basic. In wheelhouse.txt:

  ```
  ansible==2.2.0
  ```

3. ansible.cfg. Instead of using a global config, this is local so each charm can have its own variation if desired.

   [defaults]
   inventory = ./hosts
   log_path = /var/log/ansible/ansible.log
   remote_tmp = $HOME/.ansible/tmp
   local_tmp = $HOME/.ansible/tmp
   
   [ssh_connection]
   ssh_args = -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o IdentitiesOnly=yes -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPersist=60s
   control_path = ~/.ansible/cp/ansible-ssh-%%h-%%p-%%r
   

4. Options. Constructed a class to be the abstraction of Ansible options:

   class Options(object):
       """
       Options class to replace Ansible OptParser
       """
       ....
       verbosity=None,
       inventory=None,
       listhosts=None,
       subset=None,
       module_paths=None,
       extra_vars=None,
       forks=None,
       ask_vault_pass=None,
       vault_password_files=None,
       new_vault_password_file=None,
       output_file=None,
       tags=None,
       skip_tags=[],
       one_line=None,
       tree=None,
       ask_sudo_pass=None,
       ask_su_pass=None,
       sudo=None,
       sudo_user=None,
       become=None,
       become_method=None,
       become_user=None,
       become_ask_pass=None,
       ask_pass=None,
       private_key_file=None,
       remote_user=None,
       connection=None,
       timeout=None,
       ssh_common_args=None,
       sftp_extra_args=None,
       scp_extra_args=None,
       ssh_extra_args=None,
       poll_interval=None,
       seconds=None,
       check=None,
       syntax=None,
       diff=None,
       force_handlers=None,
       flush_cache=None,
       listtasks=None,
       listtags=[],
       module_path=None

5. Playbook execution. Running it is to use Ansible's API call PlaybookExecutor.

   self.pbex = playbook_executor.PlaybookExecutor(
       playbooks=pbs,
       inventory=self.inventory,
       variable_manager=self.variable_manager,
       loader=self.loader,
       options=self.options,
       passwords=passwords)
   ....
   self.pbex.run()

Integrating with charm takes the followings:

1. Include layer. In layer.yaml:

   includes:
     - 'layer:basic'
     - 'layer:ansible'

2. Create a playbooks folder and place playbooks here:

   .
   ├── config.yaml
   ├── icon.svg
   ├── layer.yaml
   ├── metadata.yaml
   ├── playbooks
   │   └── test.yaml
   └── reactive
       └── solution.py
   

3. Using config.yaml to pass in playbook for each action that is defined in the charm states. For example, define test.yaml for an action in state-0:

   options:
     state-0-playbook:
       type: string
       default: "test.yaml"
       description: "Playbook for..."

4. Define the playbook. For example, a hello world that will create a file `/tmp/testfile.txt'.

   - name: This is a hello-world example
     hosts: 127.0.0.1
     tasks:
     - name: Create a file called '/tmp/testfile.txt' with the content 'hello world'.
       copy: content="hello world\n" dest=/tmp/testfile.txt
       tags:
         - sth

   Note that tags value sth must match playbook run call (see below).

5. In charm .py file, from charms.layer.task import Runner, then in state-0 to call given playbook:

   playbook = config['state-0-playbook']
   runner = Runner(
       tags = 'sth', # <-- must match the tag in the playbook
       connection = 'local', # <-- must be "local"
       hostnames = '127.0.0.1', # <-- assuming execution in localhost
       playbooks = [playbook],
       private_key_file = '',
       run_data = {},
       become_pass = '',
       verbosity = 0
   )
   stats = runner.run()