How To Determine Your Public IP Address Programmatically From An Ansible Task

By Sudheer S

March 30, 2019

Short answer: use ipify

ipify provides a simple public address API.

Using the tool, you can determine your public IP address programmatically. If you are using the shell:

curl 'https://api.ipify.org'

Using it in a shell script:

my_ip=$(curl 'https://api.ipify.org' -s)
echo $my_ip

Using the Ansible ipify module:

- hosts: localhost
  vars:
  tasks:
    - name: Get my public IP
      ipify_facts:
        timeout: 20
      delegate_to: localhost
      register: public_ip
    - name: output
      debug: msg="{{ ipify_public_ip }}"

Sample output of Ansible playbook execution:

ansible-playbook ipify.yml 
 [WARNING]: provided hosts list is empty, only localhost is available. Note that the implicit localhost does not match 'all'


PLAY [localhost] **************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

TASK [Gathering Facts] ********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost]

TASK [Get my public IP] *******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost -> localhost]

TASK [output] *****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
    "msg": "49.206.13.205"
}

PLAY RECAP ********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
localhost                  : ok=3    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0