Ansible - Use default if a variable is not defined

You can use Jinja's default:

- name: Create user
  user:
    name: "{{ my_variable | default('default_value') }}"

Not totally related, but you can also check for both undefined AND empty (for e.g my_variable:) variable. (NOTE: only works with ansible version > 1.9, see: link)

- name: Create user
  user:
    name: "{{ ((my_variable == None) | ternary('default_value', my_variable)) \
    if my_variable is defined else 'default_value' }}"

If anybody is looking for an option which handles nested variables, there are several such options in this github issue.

In short, you need to use "default" filter for every level of nested vars. For a variable "a.nested.var" it would look like:

- hosts: 'localhost'
  tasks:
    - debug:
        msg: "{{ ((a | default({})).nested | default({}) ).var | default('bar') }}"

or you could set default values of empty dicts for each level of vars, maybe using "combine" filter. Or use "json_query" filter. But the option I chose seems simpler to me if you have only one level of nesting.

In case you using lookup to set default read from environment you have also set the second parameter of default to true:

- set_facts:
    ansible_ssh_user: "{{ lookup('env', 'SSH_USER') | default('foo', true) }}"

You can also concatenate multiple default definitions:

- set_facts:
    ansible_ssh_user: "{{ some_var.split('-')[1] | default(lookup('env','USER'), true) | default('foo') }}"