Templating (Jinja2)

Ansible uses Jinja2 templating to enable dynamic expressions and access to variables. Ansible includes a lot of specialized filters and tests for templating. You can use all the standard filters and tests included in Jinja2 as well. Ansible also offers a new plugin type: Lookup Plugins.

All templating happens on the Ansible controller before the task is sent and executed on the target machine. This approach minimizes the package requirements on the target (jinja2 is only required on the controller). It also limits the amount of data Ansible passes to the target machine. Ansible parses templates on the controller and passes only the information needed for each task to the target machine, instead of passing all the data on the controller and parsing it on the target.

Get the current time

New in version 2.8.

The now() Jinja2 function retrieves a Python datetime object or a string representation for the current time.

The now() function supports 2 arguments:


Specify True to get the current time in UTC. Defaults to False.


Accepts a strftime string that returns a formatted date time string.

See also

Intro to playbooks

An introduction to playbooks


Conditional statements in playbooks


Looping in playbooks


Playbook organization by roles

Tips and tricks

Tips and tricks for playbooks

User Mailing List

Have a question? Stop by the google group!


#ansible IRC chat channel