Not a valid attribute for a Play error — Ansible troubleshooting

How to reproduce, troubleshoot, and fix the “not a valid attribute for a Play” error.

Today we’re going to talk about Ansible troubleshooting and specifically about the “not a valid attribute for a Play” error.
I’m Luca Berton and welcome to today’s episode of Ansible Pilot.

demo

The best way of talking about Ansible troubleshooting is to jump in a live demo to show you practically the `not a valid attribute for a Play` error and how to solve it!

• invalid_play_attribute_error.yml

---
- name: file module demo
  hosts: all
  vars:
    myfile: "~/example.txt"
  task:
    - name: Creating an empty
      ansible.builtin.file:
        path: "{{ myfile }}"
        state: touch

• output

$ ansible-playbook -i demo/inventory troubleshooting/invalid_play_attribute_fix.yml
ERROR! ‘task’ is not a valid attribute for a Play
The error appears to be in 'ansible-pilot/troubleshooting/invalid_play_attribute_error.yml': line 2, column 3, but may
be elsewhere in the file depending on the exact syntax problem.
The offending line…