Vars_prompt in playbooks

Question

This is my playbook,

---
- hosts: alpha
  vars:
  company: vogo
  tasks:
     - name: debugging
       debug:
         msg: "{{ansible_hostname}}"
  vars_prompt:
     - name: "company"
       prompt: "Where do you work"
       private: no

- hosts: webservers
  vars_prompt:
     - name: "fathercompany"
       prompt: "Where your father works"
       private: no
  tasks:
     - name: test
       debug:
         msg: just testing "{{company2}}"

Here are the steps of execution flow when I run the playbook,

1 - prompt 1 (Where do you work)

2 - task debugging

3 - prompt 2 (Where your father works)

4 - task test

I have some questions.

First, When I run this playbook, the task "debugging" should run first and then the prompt should ask for the company name. But, when I run this playbook, at the very first step, it asks for "Where do you work ?". Why prompt first ? Am I missing some kind of paramater which I should have passed ?

Second, I have put 2 prompts here,

I want to use the prompt value company, in the webservers host block. But it gives me error when I try to do that.

Cannot I use the prompt value from one host block into another ?

Third,

How can I use prompts in roles ?

Answer 1

vars_prompt are bound to specific play, so you can't use them in other plays directly. Though you can use set_fact in the first play to set a fact for some host, and access it in later plays via hostvars.

Prompts are executed in the beginning of every play, it doesn't matter where you place vars_prompt block - before or after tasks section (it is a YAML dictionary after all, where sequence of keys doesn't mean anything).

I'd suggest not to use prompts at all, if you need some external data, pass it via extra variables.