ansible: pass variable to a handler - ansible

Question

I use an "eye" as a supervisor and on changes in templates have to runs something like this:
eye load service.rb
eye restart service.rb
I want to define this as a single handler for all the apps and call it like
eye reload appname
And in a handler operate like this:
- name: reload eye service
command: eye load /path/{{ service }}.rb && eye restart {{ service }}
But I can't find a way to pass variable to a handler. Is it possible?

Answer 1

Don't do this. I understand your desire to use Ansible as a programming tool, where 'handler' is a 'function' you 'call', but it's not.
You can invent a dozen of tricks to do what you want, but result would be a total mess, hard to read and even harder to debug.
The key issue is that ansible does not support 'argument passing' to anything (except for modules). All tricks you read about or invent by yourself will change global variable. If you ever wrote at least bit in any language , you know, that program where every function is using global variables (for read and write, and to pass arguments) is fundamentally flawed.
So, how to do this in a very good and readable Ansible?
Yes, just wrote a separate handler for each service. It's the cleanest and simplest Ansible. Easy to read, easy to change.
BTW: if you have to actions in a chain, do not join them with '&&'.
Use two separate handlers:
- foo:
notify:
- eye reload
- eye restart foo
(note, that order of handlers is defined in the handlers list, not the 'notify' list).
Btw, if you have few services you will save on multiple reload operations - 'eye reload' would be called once.

Answer 2

handlers/main.yml:
- name: restart my service
shell: eye load /path/{{ service }}.rb && eye restart {{ service }}
So you can setup variable through default
defaults/main.yml:
service : "service"
or you can define {{ service }} though command line:
ansible-playbook -i xxx path/to/playbook -e "service=service"
http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks_variables.html
PS: http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks_intro.html#playbook-language-
example
---
- hosts: webservers
vars:
http_port: 80
max_clients: 200
remote_user: root
tasks:
- name: ensure apache is at the latest version
yum: name=httpd state=latest
- name: write the apache config file
template: src=/srv/httpd.j2 dest=/etc/httpd.conf
notify:
- restart apache
- name: ensure apache is running (and enable it at boot)
service: name=httpd state=started enabled=yes
handlers:
- name: restart apache
service: name=httpd state=restarted
http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks_intro.html#handlers-running-operations-on-change
If you ever want to flush all the handler commands immediately though, in 1.2 and later, you can:
tasks:
- shell: some tasks go here
- meta: flush_handlers
- shell: some other tasks

Answer 3

You cannot do this but you can use set_fact in order set facts that can be accessed by the handler.