Iterators and Loops

In Ansible (and YAML for that matter), there is usually more than one way to accomplish any given automation. Automation actions can be implemented in simple YAML format or can be potentially grouped together by using the with_items iterator. In this section, we will take a look at iterators and learn how we can leverage them to reduce the amount of YAML code we need to write and organize our playbook tasks more effectively.

If you are familiar with basic programming concepts, the idea of an iterator is not new or novel. In fact, Ansible supports multiple variations of an iterator: everything from traditional loops to Do...Until, numerical iterators, and many more. Iterators in the context of Ansible playbook's are almost identical in nature as traditional programming implementations of iterators, with a few specific syntax caveats.

In this section, we are going to look at the multiple loop variations that Ansible supports. We will begin by looking at standard basic loops...