Ansible send email notifications with examples

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In this article, you will learn how to send emails using Ansible. With emails being one of the most used source communication, it can be important to use them in a project. This is why the mail module provides several options that can make it easy for you.

You’re probably thinking: Why would I send a mail using? a provisioning software?

Well, here are my three favorite use cases:

  • After an installation of a software.
  • Successful git pulls.
  • Informing certain people, when a certain job has been complete.
  • To be used as a notification in your Continous Deployment!

Examples of Ansible Mail Module:

Sending a mail using SMTP (Mandrill, Mailjet, SendGrid etc…)

- name: Send a success email
  mail:
   host: smtp.mandrillapp.com
   port: 587 
   username: 28283aeebd83616c6
   password: 0432eb4224e406
   to: Adam Shields <adam@gmail.com>
   subject: Installation Update
   body: 'The installation is complete.'

You could send emails using different mail providers such as Mandrill, Mailjet or Sendgrid. All you need to do is replace the mail configs.

Sending a mail with an attachment

You can attach multiple files by leaving a space between them. The files must exist on the controller (the machine which the ansible task is executed).

- name: Send the latest report
  mail:
   host: smtp.mandrillapp.com
   port: 587 
   username: 28283aeebd83616c6
   password: 0432eb4224e406
   to: Adam Shields <adam@gmail.com>
   subject: Installation Update
   body: 'Attached is the report of the changes that is live'
   attach: /var/www/reports/latest.csv

Sending an email to multiple users

To send a mail to multiple users you would need to separate them by a comma.

- name: Sending email to multiple recipients
  mail:
   host: smtp.mandrillapp.com
   port: 587 
   username: 28283aeebd83616c6
   password: 0432eb4224e406
   to: Adam Shields <adam@gmail.com>, John Cairins <john@outlook.com>
   subject: Overview of the changes
   body: 'Change 1205 is live.'

Reading contents of a file and including in the email.

Sometimes, you may want to include the content of a file in the message body.
You would need to read the content of the file, using the “lookup” command and include it in the message body.

- mail:
 - name: Sending contents of a file in the email body
   mail:
    host: smtp.mandrillapp.com
    port: 587 
    username: 28283aeebd83616c6
    password: 0432eb4224e406
    to: Adam Shields <adam@gmail.com>
    subject: Change log
    body: "{{ lookup('file', '/var/www/release.txt') }}"

Sending an HTML email

- name: Sending a HTML email
   mail:
    host: smtp.mandrillapp.com
    port: 587
    username: 28283aeebd83616c6
    password: 0432eb4224e406
    to: Adam Shields <adam@gmail.com>
    subject: Overview of the changes
    subtype: html
    body: '
<h1>Change log</h1>
'

There are many more options, which make’s this module very flexible.
Here are some of them:

  • cc: To include recipients in the cc header.
  • bcc: You could use this option, to include recipients in the BCC header.
  • timeout: The default timeout is 20 seconds, but if you feel it needs to be longer or shorter, you could use this option to modify it.
  • header: To add a customized header, this option can be used.

The complete list can be found on the mail module page.

To view the code examples please visit the git repo: https://github.com/infinitypp/ansible-mail-module-examples

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