[Discussion] Cleaner way to pass var values

[alxiong]

Currently, many variables in the playbook are supplied via ansible-playbook xxx.yaml --extra-vars "@some_file.yaml"

Here's a cleaner (arguably better) way:

  vars_files:
    - vars/api.yml
    - vars/resources.yml
    - vars/ordering_org.yml

While all different ways are essentially the same, using vars_files has the following advantages:

• reusable var declarations -- there are public arguments like api_endpoint, api_key etc that should be shared across playbooks.
• simpler commands -- just ansible-playbook xxx.yaml now
• version controlled record of vars files used -- providing a rough idea of where to find <DATA_FIELD> under specified task

note: the actual var/*.yaml files should be gitignored in production, but the file name included in the playbook is fine.

---

new edit: there is one scenario to use --extra-vars, when deploying multiple org each of which has the same playbook but different data.

for i in $(seq 1 10); do
  ansible-playbook 02-endorsing-org.yaml --extra-vars "@vars/org$i.yaml"
done

[sstone1]

This is a great idea @alxiong, I wasn't aware you could do this!