If you are not familiar with modules, check out Ansible - Getting Started with Modules.

The archive module is used to:

• Create a gzip compressed tar archive of one or more directories
• Create a gzip compressed archive of one or more files

AVOID TROUBLE

The archive module is part of the community.general collection. The ansible-galaxy collection install community.general command can be used to install the community.general collection.

In this example, the /tmp/foo directory will be compressed into a TAR archive. By default, a gzip compressed tar archive will be created. Even if dest contains something like foo.tar.bz2 or foo.zip, the destination file will actually be gzip compressed.

---
- hosts: all
  tasks:
  - name: create foo.tar.gz
    community.general.archive:
      path: /tmp/foo
      dest: /path/to/foo.tar.gz
...

In this example, the /tmp/foo.txt file will be gzip compressed.

When compressing a file, a copy of the file will be created. For example, when compressing foo.txt, the original foo.txt file will not be removed. For this reason, you may want to include remove: true to remove the original file

---
- hosts: all
  tasks:
  - name: create foo.txt.gz
    community.general.archive:
      path: /tmp/foo.txt
      dest: /path/to/foo.gz
      remove: true
...

The format parameter can be used to specify the type of compression to use. In this example, a directory is compressed into a zip archive.

---
- hosts: all
  tasks:
  - name: zip foo.txt
    community.general.archive:
      path: /path/to/directory
      dest: /path/to/directory.zip
      format: zip
...

In this example, bzip2 TAR archive will be created.

---
- hosts: all
  tasks:
  - name: bzip compress foo.tar
    community.general.archive:
      path: /path/to/directory
      dest: /path/to/directory.tar.bz2
      format: bz2
...

Be aware that if the target directory (path) does not exist, something like this will be returned.

TASK [create foo.tar.gz]
fatal: [server1.example.com]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "msg": "path /tmp/foo.tar.gz does not exist", "path": "/tmp/foo.tar.gz"}

For this reason, you may want to first use the find module to determine if the target directory exists, and then only run the archive module when the target directory exists.

---
- hosts: all
  tasks:
  - find:
      paths: /tmp
      patterns: foo
      file_type: directory
      recurse: false
    register: out

  - name: create foo.tar.gz
    community.general.archive:
      path: /tmp/foo
      dest: /path/to/foo.tar.gz
    when:
      - out.matched == 1
...

The content of multiple files can be appended to a gzip archive.

---
- hosts: all
  tasks:
  - name: create foo.tar.gz
    community.general.archive:
      path: 
      - /path/to/foo.txt
      - /path/to/bar.txt
      dest: /path/to/foo.gz
...

Multiple directories can be appended to a TAR archive.

---
- hosts: all
  tasks:
  - name: create foo.tar.gz
    community.general.archive:
      path: 
      - /path/to/dir1
      - /path/to/dir2
      dest: /path/to/foo.tar.gz
...

The register parameter can be used to store the output. In this example, the output is stored in the "out" variable.

---
- hosts: all
  tasks:
  - name: create foo.tar.gz
    community.general.archive:
      path: /path/to/directory
      dest: /path/to/foo.tar.gz
    register: out
...

The debug module can be used to print the out variable.

- debug:
    var: out

If the archive is not created, something like this should be returned.

TASK [debug]
ok: [server1.example.com] => {
    "out": {
        "changed": false,
        "skip_reason": "Conditional result was False",
        "skipped": true
    }
}

If the archive is created, something like this should be returned.

TASK [debug]
ok: [server1.example.com] => {
    "out": {
        "archived": [
            "/tmp/foo.txt",
            "/tmp/bar.txt",
            "/tmp/files.tar.gz",
            "/tmp/ansible_archive_payload_rbz5HT/ansible_archive_payload.zip"
        ],
        "arcroot": "//",
        "changed": true,
        "dest": "/tmp/files.tar.gz",
        "expanded_exclude_paths": [],
        "expanded_paths": [
            "/tmp"
        ],
        "failed": false,
        "gid": 0,
        "group": "root",
        "missing": [],
        "mode": "0644",
        "owner": "root",
        "secontext": "unconfined_u:object_r:user_tmp_t:s0",
        "size": 84348,
        "state": "file",
        "uid": 0
    }
}

Append

The archive module does not have an option to append to an archive that already exists. In this example, the find module is used to find files matching foo below the /tmp directory, and then the foo array contains each matched file. Each file in the foo array will be appended to the archive.

---
- hosts: all
  tasks:
  - find:
      paths: /tmp
      patterns: foo
    register: out

  - name: create foo.tar.gz
    community.general.archive:
      path: "{{ foo }}"
      dest: /path/to/foo.tar.gz
    vars:
      foo: "{{ out.files | map(attribute='path') | list }}"
...