There are two ways to determine if plays in a playbook will be successful, like a dry run, meaning that no changes will be made on the manage nodes (e.g. target systems)

• --check flag (that is what is described in this article)
• check_mode parameter

The --check flag will check every play in a playbook. The check_mode parameter will only check certain plays in a playbook.

Let's say you've a playbook named foo.yml that is using the lineinfile parameter will append "Hello World" to /tmp/foo.txt, like this.

- name: "append 'World' to /tmp/foo.txt"
  lineinfile:
    path: "/tmp/foo.txt"
    line: "World"

Here is how to use the --check flag with the ansible-playbook command.

ansible-playbook foo.yml --check

Something like this should be returned.

TASK [append 'Hello World' to /tmp/foo.txt]
changed: [server1.example.com]

PLAY RECAP
server1.example.com : ok=1    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0

On the managed node, "Hello World" would not have been appended to /tmp/foo.txt. Now let's invoke the ansible-playbook command without the --check flag.

ansible-playbook foo.yml --check

This should produce the same exact output, which is something important to be aware of. The --check flag will not change the output produced by the ansible-playbook command. However, now, "Hello World" should have been appended to /tmp/foo.txt on the managed node. Just like the --check flag, the check_mode parameter will not change the output produced by the ansible-playbook command.

TASK [append 'Hello World' to /tmp/foo.txt]
changed: [server1.example.com]

PLAY RECAP
server1.example.com : ok=1    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0

Be aware that some modules, such as the uri module, do not support the --check flag. For modules that do not support check mode, the module can be skipped by including when not ansible_check_mode.

- name: determine if foo.txt exists
  uri:
    url: http://example.com/foo.txt
  when:
    - not ansible_check_mode