community.general/rst/api.rst

API
```

The Python API is very powerful, and is how the ansible CLI and ansible-playbook
are implemented.  

It's pretty simple::

    import ansible.runner

    runner = ansible.runner.Runner(
       module_name='ping',
       module_args='',
       pattern='web*',
       forks=10
    )
    datastructure = runner.run()

The run method returns results per host, grouped by whether they
could be contacted or not.  Return types are module specific, as
expressed in the 'ansible-modules' documentation.::

    {
        "dark" : {
           "web1.example.com" : "failure message"
        }
        "contacted" : {
           "web2.example.com" : 1
        }
    }

A module can return any type of JSON data it wants, so Ansible can
be used as a framework to rapidly build powerful applications and scripts.