Extensions, php.ini & lineinfile

PHP, MySQL and Nginx: check, check and check! But we've only installed php7.1-cli. An in reality, we need a lot more than that! What about php7.1-mysql or php7.1-fpm? Yep, we need those friendly extensions... and a few others.

Looping: with_items

Wonderfully, on Ubuntu, these are all installed via apt-get. We could copy and paste the php7.1-cli task over and over and over again for each package. Or, to level-up our Ansible-awesomeness, we can loop!

Let's see how: change the task's name to Install PHP packages:

Then, instead of php7.1-cli, add the very cryptic "{{ item }}":

Finish it with a new with_items key after the apt module. This gets a big list of the stuff we want: php7.1-cli, php7.1-curl, ice cream, php7.1 -fpm, php7.1-intl, a pony and php7.1-mysql:

---
- hosts: vb

  tasks:
    # ...
    - name: Install PHP packages
      become: true
      apt:
        name:
          - php7.1-cli
          - php7.1-curl
          - php7.1-fpm
          - php7.1-intl
          - php7.1-mysql
        state: latest

If we need more goodies later, we can add them. Flip over to your terminal and try it!

ansible-playbook ansible/playbook.yml -i ansible/hosts.ini

Using Jinja

While we wait, let's check out the code we just wrote. For the first time, we're seeing Ansible's templating language in action! Yep, whenever you see {{ }}, you're writing Jinja code - a Python templating language... which - guess what - is more or less identical to Twig. Win!

In this case, we're opening up Jinja to print a variable called item. That works because Ansible has this nice with_items loop feature. And notice, this is not special to the apt module - it'll work anywhere.

Oh, and those quotes are important:

Quoting is usually optional in YAML. But if a value starts with {{, it's mandatory.

Head back to the terminal. Yes! Celebrate! PHP extensions installed! I'll move to my third tab where I've already run vagrant ssh to get into the VM. Check for the MySQL extension:

php -i | grep mysql

See that PDO MySQL stuff? That proves it worked!

Re-run that command again and look for timezone:

php -i | grep timezone

Tweaking php.ini settings with lineinfile

Hmm, it says date.timezone no value, which means that it is not set in php.ini. Since PHP 7.0, that's not a huge deal - in PHP 5 this caused an annoying warning. But, I still want to make sure it's set.

Question number 1 is... where the heck is my php.ini file? Answer, run:

php --ini

There it is /etc/php/7.1/cli/php.ini. Open that up in vim and hit /timezone, enter, to find that setting:

[Date]
; Defines the default timezone used by the date functions
; http://php.net/date.timezone
;date.timezone =

Ok, it's commented-out right now. We want Ansible to uncomment that line and set it to UTC. Quit with Escape, :q, enter.

So how can we tell Ansible to make a change right in the middle of a file? Of course, Ansible has a module just for that! Search for the "Ansible lineinfile" module. Ah, ha!

Ensure a particular line is in a file, or replace an existing line

Let's check out the options! The only required one is path - the file we need to change. Then, we can use the regexp option to find the target line and line as the value to replace it with.

Before we do this, look back at the path option. It says that before Ansible 2.3, this was called dest, destfile or name instead of path. What version do we have? Find out:

ansible --version

We're on 2.1! So instead of path, we need to use dest. This is something to watch out for... because at the time of this recording, Ansible 2.3 isn't even released yet! For some reason, Ansible always shows the docs for its latest, unreleased version.

Let's rock! Add the new task: Set date.timezone for CLI. Add become: true and use the lineinfile module:

For options, pass it dest: /etc/php/7.1/cli/php.ini and regexp: date.timezone =:

We're not leveraging any regex here: this will simply find a line that contains date.timezone =. Finally, add line: date.timezone = UTC:

With the line option, the entire line will be replaced - not just the part that was matched from the regexp option. That means the comment at the beginning of the line will be removed.

Now, copy that entire task and paste it. In Ubuntu, there are 2 different php.ini files: rename this one to Set date.timezone for FPM. Change the dest path from cli/ to fpm/. That's the correct path inside the VM:

Run it!

ansible-playbook ansible/playbook.yml -i ansible/hosts.ini

Before that finishes, flip back to the VM and check the timezone setting:

php -i | grep timezone

No value. Then... once it finishes... try it again:

php -i | grep timezone

Got it! UTC! I'll open up my php.ini to be sure... and...

[Date]
; Defines the default timezone used by the date functions
; http://php.net/date.timezone
date.timezone = UTC

Yes! The line was perfectly replaced.

Say hello to lineinfile: your Swiss army knife for updating configuration files.