Passing External Vars with Ansible to a Playbook - ansible

Question

Ansible variables passed via command line are not getting defined in the playbook.
I'm looking to pass external variables via command line to an ansible playbook. It is not working as expected using the -e, which is to call external variables based on the ansible documentation.
ansible-playbook /opt/playbooks/shutdown.yaml -f 10 -i /opt/inventory/hosts -e 'logPath=/my/log/path logName=shutdown.log logDir=shutdown'
---
- name: Transfer and execute a script.
hosts: all
remote_user: ansible
sudo: yes
tasks:
- name: Transfer the script
copy: src=/opt/files/shutdown.sh dest=/tmp/ mode=0777
- name: Execute the script
command: sh /tmp/shutdown.sh logPath logName logDir
- name: cat log output
command: cat logDir
register: myoutput
- name: get stout of execution of script
debug: msg={{ myoutput.stdout_lines }}
Here is my output, I'm expecting LogPath to be defined as the variable using key:value pair
: FAILED! => {"changed": true, "cmd": ["cat", "logPath"], "delta": "0:00:00.005258", "end": "2019-02-06 13:30:03.551631", "failed": true, "rc": 1, "start": "2019-02-06 13:30:03.546373", "stderr": "cat: logPath: No such file or directory", "stderr_lines": ["cat: logPath: No such file or directory"], "stdout": "", "stdout_lines": []}
to retry, use: --limit #/opt/playbooks/shutdown.retry

Answer 1

your command task seems wrong, you need to use curly brackets for ansible to treat the enclosed string as variable (and replace it with its value). Try this syntax:
- name: Execute the script
command: sh /tmp/shutdown.sh {{ logPath }} {{ logName }} {{ logDir }}
hope it helps

Answer 2

these should be passed in JSON notation, which would support passing other data-types than string:
-e '{"log_path":"/my/log/path","log_name":"shutdown.log","log_dir":"shutdown"}'
and then substitute accordingly:
- name: Execute the script
command: sh /tmp/shutdown.sh log_path log_name log_dir
snake-case is rather the default for variable names, than camel-case.
see the documentation.