How do you use handlers in Ansible?

A handler is a task that only runs when explicitly triggered by another task's notify directive, and typically only when that task actually reports a change. Handlers are the standard way to express "restart this service, but only if its configuration actually changed."

tasks:
  - name: Update nginx config
    ansible.builtin.template:
      src: nginx.conf.j2
      dest: /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
    notify: Restart nginx

handlers:
  - name: Restart nginx
    ansible.builtin.service:
      name: nginx
      state: restarted

Handlers are defined much like normal tasks but live in a separate handlers section (or a role's handlers/main.yml), and by default they run once, at the end of the play, after all regular tasks have completed - even if multiple tasks notify the same handler during the run, it still only fires a single time.

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