ansible manipulate file with a date format

Question

In ansible, I would like to manipulate files/directories/archive that are composed or to composed like this:

How would I do that. It seem Ansible is not able to handler that. (I doubt). So, what I do wrong ?

Ex:

- name: create file with a date in name
  file: path=/path/somefile.`date +%y_%m_%d`

- name: unzip a file
  unarchive: path=/path/zomezip.`date +%y_%m_%d`.tar.gz bla bla....

Answer 1

Set a variable, then use it with Ansible's Jinja2 templating system (it looks like you're trying to do PHP with the dot operator and the backticks)

vars:
    date: "{{ lookup('pipe', 'date +%Y%m%d-%H%M') }}"
tasks:
  - name: create file with a date in name
    file: path="/path/somefile{{ date }}"

Or use the lookup itself in the templates:

  - name: create file with a date in name
    file: path="/path/somefile{{ lookup('pipe', 'date +%Y%m%d-%H%M') }}"

Answer 2

Starting with 2.4, you can also use the strftime filter (doc):

# Display year-month-day
{{ '%Y-%m-%d' | strftime }}

# Display hour:min:sec
{{ '%H:%M:%S' | strftime }}

# Use ansible_date_time.epoch fact
{{ '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S' | strftime(ansible_date_time.epoch) }}

# Use arbitrary epoch value
{{ '%Y-%m-%d' | strftime(0) }}          # => 1970-01-01

Answer 3

You could try..

vars: 
  - a_timestamp: "{{ timestamp.stdout }}"

tasks:
  - name: Get a timestamp
    command: date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S
    register: timestamp

then add the variable where needed.