Ansible plugins are a core part of Ansible's functionality and we discovered, in this chapter, that we have been working with them throughout this book without even realizing it! Ansible's modular design makes it easy to extend and add functionality to, regardless of whether you are working with modules or the various types of plugins that are currently supported. Whether it's to add a new filter for string processing or a new way of looking up data (or perhaps even a new connection mechanism to new technology), Ansible plugins provide a complete framework that can extend Ansible far beyond its already extensive capabilities.

In this chapter, we learned about the various types of plugins that are supported by Ansible, before exploring them in greater detail and looking at how you can obtain documentation and information on the existing ones. We then completed...