Ansible: Share handlers between playbooks

in

A StackOverflow question showed me that Ansible handlers can be stored in their own YAML file and included into any playbook to avoid repetition. You can create a handler.yml file that is just a list of handlers, like:

- name: restart apache
  command: 'apachectl graceful'
  listen: 'apache conf change'
- name: restart ssh
  service:
    name: ssh
    state: restarted

Then, in any given playbook, you can include and use them like:

- name: my playbook
  become: true
  handlers:
    - include: handlers.yml
  hosts: all
  tasks:
    - name: configure server name
      lineinfile:
        dest: /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
        line: 'ServerName tobymackenzie.com'
        regexp: '^ServerName.*$'
        state: present
      notify: 'apache conf change'

This simplifies things nicely if you reuse handlers in multiple playbooks. Roles sound like they make this even easier, but I haven’t switched to them yet.