Assigning group variables in inventory module

[mkrawczyszyn]

SUMMARY

It would be very handy to have possibility to add not only host variables but also group variables. Is this feature planned?

ISSUE TYPE

• Feature Idea

COMPONENT NAME

Now inventory module.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

N/A

[epicanthal]

I think because this inventory plugin is based upon ansible.builtin.constructed which doesn't provide your feature...maybe it wouldn't be added? Maybe you can request your feature idea in the core Ansible project? Then all other projects' inventory plugins based on constructed would be able to take advantage?

I think the idea is that you use group_vars for supplying group variables. e.g. if you use the sample webservers dynamic group from the constructed documentation:

plugin: ansible.builtin.constructed
strict: False
compose:
    var_sum: var1 + var2

    # this variable will only be set if I have a persistent fact cache enabled (and have non expired facts)
    # `strict: False` will skip this instead of producing an error if it is missing facts.
    server_type: "ansible_hostname | regex_replace ('(.{6})(.{2}).*', '\\2')"
groups:
    # simple name matching
    webservers: inventory_hostname.startswith('web')

you can then have the vars file in group_vars/webservers.yml:

var1: value1
var2: value2
etc.