Question:
In response to a change, I have multiple related tasks that should run.
How do I write an Ansible handler with multiple tasks?
For example, I would like a handler that restarts a service only if already started:
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- name: Restart conditionally shell: check_is_started.sh register: result - name: Restart conditionally step 2 service: name=service state=restarted when: result |
Answer:
There is proper solution to this problem as of Ansible 2.2.
handlers can also “listen” to generic topics, and tasks can notify those topics as follows:
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handlers: - name: restart memcached service: name=memcached state=restarted listen: "restart web services" - name: restart apache service: name=apache state=restarted listen: "restart web services" tasks: - name: restart everything command: echo "this task will restart the web services" notify: "restart web services" |
This use makes it much easier to trigger multiple handlers. It also decouples handlers from their names, making it easier to share handlers among playbooks and roles
Specifically to the question, this should work:
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- name: Check if restarted shell: check_is_started.sh register: result listen: Restart processes - name: Restart conditionally step 2 service: name=service state=restarted when: result listen: Restart processes |
and in the task, notify handlers via ‘Restart processes’
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/playbooks_handlers.html#naming-handlers