Ansible Academy · Lesson

The template Module & .j2 Files

Deploy a rendered file to a host.

Static Files Are Not Enough

The copy module ships a file unchanged. But config files often need a port or hostname that differs per server, so static copies fall short. 🤔

The template module renders a file through Jinja2 first, filling in variables, then copies the result to the host.

- name: Deploy config
  template:
    src: nginx.conf.j2
    dest: /etc/nginx/nginx.conf