How I debug content in many file using Ansible - file

Question

I want to use content in .txt file and I tried to debug content using following code.
- name: Find .txt files
find:
paths: "{{output_path}}"
patterns: '*.txt,'
register: file_path
- name: Show content
debug:
msg: "{{lookup('file', item.path)}}"
with_items: "{{file_path.files}}"
But I got this error.
[WARNING]: Unable to find '/path/file.txt' in expected paths (use -vvvvv to see paths)
TASK [Show content] ******************************************************
fatal: [10.0.2.40]: FAILED! => {"msg": "An unhandled exception occurred
while running the lookup plugin 'file'. Error was a <class 'ansible.errors.AnsibleError'>,
original message: could not locate file in lookup: /path/file.txt"}
How I fix this error?

Answer 1

There's nothing inherently wrong with your playbook, except that you have a comma inside the find pattern (this might be just a typo, but you should check it out) if you are running this playbook locally. In the case that you are running this playbook on a remote server, you should try to use a different module like slurp or fetch.
slurp works great if you need to keep the contents of the txt in memory to use it on another task. Bear in mind that ansible will encode the slurp module's output in base64, so you should decode it first when you want to use it. From the module example page:.`
- name: Find out what the remote machine's mounts are
ansible.builtin.slurp:
src: /proc/mounts
register: mounts
- name: Print returned information
ansible.builtin.debug:
msg: "{{ mounts['content'] | b64decode }}"
You can verify what I am saying with the following example:
I tried replicating your situation locally. On a temporary folder, I run the following command to populate it with many .txt files:
echo {001..099} > file_{001..099}.txt
Then I wrote the same playbook that you provided:
#
# show_contents.yml
#
- hosts: localhost
gather_facts: no
tasks:
- name: Find .txt files
find:
paths: "{{ output_files }}"
patterns: "*.txt"
register: file_path
- name: Debug the file_path variable
debug:
var: file_path
- name: Get the contents of the files using debug
debug:
msg: "{{ lookup('file', item.path ) }}"
loop: "{{ file_path.files }}"
If you run this playbook, passing the appropriate output_files variable with --extra-vars, the playbook works fine.
ansible-playbook show_contents.yml --extra-vars "output_files=/tmp/ansible"
You'll see that the playbook runs without an issue. Try using this example to figure out what you are trying to achieve. And then modify the playbook to use some of the previously mentioned modules when working with remote servers.