Using Ansible documentation

For this challenge we will examine an already created Ansible Playbook

Network Facts

Topics Covered:

Ansible Documentation
Facts for Network Devices
The debug module

Ansible for Network Automation Documentation

Specific Network Automation Section for Ansible including a getting started guide

red.ht/NetworkDocs

Accessing the Ansible docs

With the use of the latest command utility ansible-navigator, one can trigger access to all the modules available to them as well as details on specific modules.
```
ansible-navigator doc -l -m stdout
```
You will see the following output:
```
add_host
amazon.aws.aws_az_facts
amazon.aws.aws_caller_facts
amazon.aws.aws_caller_info
```
A formal introduction to ansible-navigator and how it can be used to run playbooks in the following exercise.

Lets get started

That is the end of of your lab briefing!

Step 1 - Using documentation

Enter the ansible-navigator interactive mode on the terminal tab
```
ansible-navigator
```
You will see the following:
```
`:doc <plugin>`
```

To show how this works, use the debug module by typing :doc debug

:doc debug

The documentation for the debug module is now displayed in you interactive terminal session. This is a YAML representation of the same exact documentation you would see on docs.ansible.com. Examples can be cut and paste directly from the module documentation into your Ansible Playbook.

When referring to a non-built in module, there is three important fields:

namespace.collection.module

For example:

cisco.ios.facts

Explanation of terms:

namespace - example cisco - A namespace is grouping of multiple collections. The cisco namespace contains multiple collections including ios, nxos, and iosxr.
collection - example ios - A collection is a distribution format for Ansible content that can include playbooks, roles, modules, and plugins. The ios collection contains all the modules for Cisco IOS/IOS-XE
module - example facts - Modules are discrete units of code that can be used in a playbook task. For example the facts modules will return structured data about that specified system.

Press the Esc key to return to the main menu. Try repeating the :doc command with the cisco.ios.facts module.
```
:doc cisco.ios.facts
```
We will be using the facts module in our playbook.