# README
go-fact-fetch
go-fact-fetch allows you to add custom facts
for use with Ansible.
Installation
Grab one of the packages appropriate for your system on the releases page.
Usage
In Ansible
After installing go-fact-fetch, custom facts it produces should be available/visible with:
- name: grab new facts
ansible.builtin.setup:
If using Fedora, the following would download the latest version of go-fact-fetch and retrieve the facts:
- name: install go-fact-fetch
ansible.builtin.dnf:
name: "https://github.com/joshuar/go-fact-fetch/releases/download/v{{ go_fact_fetch_version }}/go-fact-fetch_{{ go_fact_fetch_version }}_linux_x86_64.rpm"
state: installed
disable_gpg_check: true
become: true
when: ansible_distribution == "Fedora"
- name: grab new facts
ansible.builtin.setup:
Set the go_fact_fetch_version to the latest available version.
On the command-line
go-fact-fetch is not really a command-line tool. If you have installed via one
of the packages (rpm/deb), it should already be set up for use with Ansible and
the facts available through the ansible_local hierarchy. If you want to see
what facts are available then run:
go-fact-fetch
To see the available commands. Then you can run:
go-fact-fetch <command>
To see the facts it will produce (in JSON format). You can use
jq to pretty-print the output, for example:
go-fact-fetch nmcli | jq
How it works
go-fact-fetch simplifies using executable .fact files in /etc/ansible/fact.d.
Rather than individual executable or shell scripts, each .fact file ends being
something like the following:
#!/bin/sh
go-fact-fetch <some-command>
<some-command> in go-fact-fetch is created using the great
Cobra library to make self-sufficient that can
then call any executable, parse the output and generate appropriate JSON that
Ansible then absorbs into its custom fact handling.
Using Cobra, it should be easy to extend go-fact-fetch to support any particular command or fact output you require.
Contributing
Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.
Some documentation for adding new commands and parsing command-line output and generating JSON can be found in CONTRIBUTING.md.