---
title: 'Ansible Tip - Referencing items from a hash'
url: 'https://www.linuxserver.io/blog/2018-03-23-an-ansible-tip-for-referencing-items-from'
markdown: 'https://www.linuxserver.io/blog/2018-03-23-an-ansible-tip-for-referencing-items-from.md'
date: '2018-03-23'
description: "Let's say you are in the midst of writing an Ansible playbook and you need to reference multiple values from an 'item' in different places. Here's a neat code snippet that will allow you to do just that. hosts: all vars: \_\_file_path_1: /usr/bin \_\_file_path_2: /example \_\_file_path_3: /opt tasks: …"
taxonomy:
  tag:
    - ansible
    - linux
---

# Ansible Tip - Referencing items from a hash

Let's say you are in the midst of writing an Ansible playbook and you need to reference multiple values from an 'item' in different places. Here's a neat code snippet that will allow you to do just that.

```
hosts: all 
vars:
  file_path_1: /usr/bin
  file_path_2: /example
  file_path_3: /opt
tasks:
  - name: example task
    file:
      path: "{{ item.0 }}/{{ item.1 }}"
      state: present
    with items:
      - [ "{{ file_path_1 }}/{{ file_path_2 }}"
      - [ "{{ file_path_3 }}/{{ file_path_2 }}"
```

In this example we can reference different parts of the `item` hash simply by using its index value. You can also name keys and reference them thus if you prefer:

```
- name: mount disks
  mount:
    name: "{{ item.name }}"
    src: "{{ item.src }}"
    fstype: "{{ item.fs }}"
    # change to 'mounted' to auto mount
    state: present
  with_items:
    - { name: /mnt/disk1, src: /dev/sda1, fs: ext4}
    - { name: /mnt/disk2, src: /dev/sda2, fs: ext4}
```

---

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