How to have multiple tasks under one role in Ansible?

I am setting up Ansible as a newbie. I would like to group a few tasks under an Nginx role.

See my folder structure

The only way I could get this to work is to use include statements in my playbooks... but that means I needed to start changing everything to relative paths since Ansible stopped being able to find things.

My playbook currently:

- name: 
    Install Nginx, Node, and Verdeccia
  hosts: 
    all
  remote_user: 
    root
  tasks:
    - include: ../roles/nginx/tasks/install.yml
    - include: ../roles/nginx/tasks/create_node_config.yml
  vars:
    hostname: daz.com

How can I reference the sub task in the playbook to be something like

tasks:
  - nginx.install

and still be within best practices.

Your use of roles so far is not in line with the norm or the idea of Ansible. From a purely technical point of view, it is quite possible that you have multiple task bundles in yml files that you include in the playbook.

If you want to include a specific task file from a role, you should do this via the module include_role with the parameter tasks_from.

However, the workflow with roles usually looks different.

1. in the folder tasks should always be a file main.yml, this is called automatically if the role is included.

2. in this main.yml you can then add further control logic to include your yml files as required.

As it looks to me, for example, you always need to install, but depending on the use case you want to have different configurations.

1. create in your nginx role a file defaults/main.yml.

   ---
   config_flavor: none
   

   This initializes the config_flavor variable with the string none.

2. create in your nginx role a file tasks/main.yml.

   ---
   - name: include installation process
     include_tasks: install.yml
   
   - name: configure node
     include_tasks: create_node_config.yml
     when: config_flavor == "node"
   
   - name: configure symfony
     include_tasks: create_symfony_config.yml
     when: config_flavor == "symfony"
   
   - name: configure wordpress
     include_tasks: create_wordpress_config.yml
     when: config_flavor == "wordpress"
   

   • The main.yml will be included by default when the role is applied.
   • This is where the installation is done first, then the proper configuration is done.
   • Which configuration should be done is defined by the variable config_flavor. In the listed example the values are node, symfony and wordpress. In all other cases the installation will be done, but no configuration (so in the default case with none).

3. include your role in the playbook as follows

   ---
   - name: Install Nginx, Node, and Verdeccia
     hosts: all
     remote_user: root
   
     vars:
       hostname: daz.com
   
     roles:
       - role: nginx
         config_flavor: node
   

   At this point you can set the value for config_flavor. If you set wordpress instead, the tasks create_wordpress_config.yml will be included automatically, using the logic from tasks/main.yml.

You can find more about roles in the Ansible Docs.

There are many more possibilities and ways, you will get to know them in the course of your learning. Basically I would recommend you to read a lot in the Ansible docs and to use them as a reference book.