AWX/Ansible Tower: How To Use A List Of Hosts Specified In A Templates Survey As The Inventory

Many of the AWX projects I write are designed to be run against specific hosts which may not be contained in an inventory included in AWX. For this scenario I usually write a playbook in such a way that the hosts can be specified in a survey question when the template is executed.

As an example, the first task in the following playbook uses the add_host module to create a new inventory group. The source for the new group comes from the survey_hosts variable. The playbook then continues with a new play using the new group created as the hosts for the play.

---
- name: configure inventory hosts
  hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: no
  
  vars:
    linux_hosts: "{{ survey_hosts.split('\n') }}"  
  
  tasks:
    
  - name: make host group from survey hosts list
    add_host:
      hostname: "{{ item }}"
      groupname: new_group      
    loop: "{{ linux_hosts }}"

- name: switch connecton location of linux openvpn client service
  hosts: new_group,!localhost
  gather_facts: no
  become: true
  
  tasks:
  
  - name: switch location
    include_role:
      name: switch-location