Practical Ansible 2

Learning the YAML syntax

In this section, you will learn how to write a YAML file with the correct syntax and best practices and tips for running a playbook on multiple remote machines. Ansible uses YAML because it is easier for humans to read and write than other common data formats, such as XML or JSON. There are no commas, curly braces, or tags to worry about, and the enforced indentation in the code ensures that it is tidy and easy on the eye. In addition, there are libraries available in most programming languages for working with YAML.

This reflects one of the core goals of Ansible—to produce easy-to-read (and write) code that described the target state of a given host. Ansible playbooks are (ideally) supposed to be self-documenting, ...