Ansible: How to delete files starting with a specific name? - ansible

Question

I am new to Ansible.
I have such a directory:
home/etc/directory/
Which contains the following files:
application.yml
application.yml_new
application.yml.12345
etc.yml
What I want to do is to delete/remove the files
application.yml_new
application.yml.12345
I do not want to explicitly name these files but I want to delete all files with a suffix additional to application.yml (since the names are slightly different depending on the application).
Now I am wondering how to do this?
I found the file but I am not sure if I can do this with it or can it be only done with the shell-module?

Answer 1

Q: "Delete all files with a suffix additional to application.yml"
A: Find the files first. For example, given the tree
shell> tree etc/directory
etc/directory/
├── application.yml
├── application.yml.12345
├── application.yml_new
└── etc.yml
0 directories, 4 files
The module find does the job
- find:
paths: etc/directory
patterns: '^application\.yml.+$'
use_regex: true
register: result
gives
result.files|map(attribute='path')|list:
- etc/directory/application.yml.12345
- etc/directory/application.yml_new
Iterate the list and delete the files
- file:
state: absent
path: "{{ item }}"
loop: "{{ result.files|map(attribute='path')|list }}"
gives
shell> tree etc/directory
etc/directory/
├── application.yml
└── etc.yml
0 directories, 2 files
Explanation of the Python regex
patterns: '^application\.yml.+$'
^ ............. matches the beginning of the string
application ... matches the string 'application'
\. ............ matches dot '.'; must be escaped because of dot matches any character
yml ........... matches the string 'yml'
.+ ............ matches one or more of any characters
$ ............. matches the end of the string

Answer 2

One way to achieve this is to use the find command in combination with the file module in ansible.
Like this:
- name: getfiles
shell: "find * -name 'application.yml*' ! -name application.yml"
register: files_to_delete
args:
chdir: "/home/admin"
- name: delete files
file:
path: "/home/admin/{{item}}"
state: absent
with_items: "{{files_to_delete.stdout_lines}}"
First, we search for the files by using the find command and register the results in a variable.
Then we are able to use the stdout lines which is an array of the filenames we want to delete.
NOTE: Because the find command also includes the application.yml I exclude it. As seen in the example above
At last, we can loop over the list and delete the files.