Terraform Configuration Management ⚙️

Read, generate, and modify configuration - 18%

• 8a Demonstrate use of variables and outputs
• 8b Describe secure secret injection best practice
• 8c Understand the use of collection and structural types
• 8d Create and differentiate resource and data configuration
• 8e Use resource addressing and resource parameters to connect resources together
• 8f Use HCL and Terraform functions to write configuration
• 8g Describe built-in dependency management (order of execution based)

Variables

terraform apply -var "instance_name=YetAnotherName"

Local Variable

Used to define local environment configurations or constants

• keep the number of local variables to a minimum
• Instead use Input Vars as parameter to resource/module

Example

    locals {
    project_name       = "Terraforming"
    default_region     = "us-east-1a"
    common_tags = {
        Terraform   = "true"
        Environment = "dev"
    }}

Input Vraiables

Used to assign dynamic values to resource attributes as Input

• input variables allows to pass values before the code execution.
• ususllay stored in input.tf file

example:

variable "vpc_name" {
    description = "Name of VPC"
    type        = string
    default     = "module-vpc"
}

Variables can be overridden using

• Passing the values in CLI as -var argument eg

  terraform plan -var "ami=test" -var "type=t2.nano"

• Using .tfvars file to set variable values explicitly eg

  terraform plan -var-file prod.tfvars

  • file with extension .auto.tfvars will autoapply without -varfile argument

Supported Variables types

Primitive Types: string, number & bool

object and tuple

1. Strings

variable "string_type" {
description = "This is a variable of type string"
type        = string
default     = "Default string value for this variable"
}

heredoc style format

variable "string_heredoc_type" {
    description = "This is a variable of type string"
    type        = string
    default     = <<EOF
    Hello World!
    EOF
}

2. Number

variable "number_type" {
    description = "This is a variable of type number"
    type        = number
    default     = 42
    }

3. Boolean

variable "boolean_type" {
    description = "This is a variable of type bool"
    type        = bool
    default     = true
}

Complex Type

1. Structural Types: object and tuple

4. Object

variable "object_type" {
    description = "This is a variable of type object"
    type = object({
    name = string
    age  = number
    enabled = bool
    })
    default = {
        name    = "John Doe"
        age     = 30
        enabled = true
    }
} 

8. Tuple: fixed-length ORDERED collection of DIFFERENT data types.

variable "tuple_type" {
    description = "This is a variable of type tuple"
    type        = tuple([string, number, bool])
    default     = ["item1", 42, true]
}    

2. Collection Types: list, map, and set

5. List: Collection of SIMILAR items/ objects

variable "list_type" {
    description = "This is a variable of type list"
    type        = list(string)
    default     = ["string1", "string2", "string3"]
}   

List of Objects

variable "list_of_objects" {
    description = "This is a variable of type List of objects"
    type = list(object({
        name = string,
        cidr = string
    }))
    default = [{
        name = "Subnet A",
        cidr = "10.10.1.0/24"},
        {name = "Subnet B",
        cidr = "10.10.2.0/24"},
        {name = "Subnet C",
        cidr = "10.10.3.0/24"}]
}

6. Map: Key Value pair

variable "map_type" {
    description = "This is a variable of type map"
    type        = map(string)
    default     = {
        key1 = "value1"
        key2 = "value2"
    }
}   

Map of Objects

variable "map_of_objects" {
    description = "This is a variable of type Map of objects"
    type = map(object({
        name = string,
        cidr = string
    }))
    default = {
        "subnet_a" = {
        name = "Subnet A",
        cidr = "10.10.1.0/24"},
    "subnet_b" = {
        name = "Subnet B",
        cidr = "10.10.2.0/24"},
    "subnet_c" = {
        name = "Subnet C",
        cidr = "10.10.3.0/24"}
    }}

7. Set: UNORDERED collection of UNIQUE values(no duplicate possible)

variable "set_example" {
    description = "This is a variable of type set"
    type        = set(string)
    default     = ["item1", "item2", "item3"]
}

Dynamic Types: The "any" Constraint

serves as a placeholder for a type yet to be decided.

any is not itself a type: when interpreting a value against a type constraint containing any, Terraform will attempt to find a single actual type that could replace the any keyword to produce a valid result.

variable "settings" {
 type = any
}

Using tfvars & *.auto.tfvars file

Used to define varaibles used in differeent env eg:

terraform apply -var-file="testing.tfvars"

Terraform automatically loads file with names:

• exactly terraform.tfvars or terraform.tfvars.json.
• ending in .auto.tfvars or .auto.tfvars.json.

variable.tf vs variable.tfvars

• variable.tf are files where all variables are declared; these might or might not have a default value.
• variable.tfvars are files where the variables are provided/assigned a value.

Environment Variables

command	use
export TF_VAR_ami=ami-0d26eb3972b7f8c96	set tf env variable as fallback if variable values are not found elsewhere.
export TF_LOG=trace	Enable all Logging to TRACE, DEBUG, INFO, WARN or ERROR
export TF_LOG_CORE=trace	Enable subset core Logging to TRACE, DEBUG, INFO, WARN or ERROR
export TF_LOG_PROVIDER =trace	Enable subset provider Logging to TRACE, DEBUG, INFO, WARN or ERROR
export TF_LOG=off	Turn off logging
export TF_LOG_PATHG=./terraform.log	Persisist logs to local file system
TF_DATA_DIR	changes the location where Terrform keep .terraform
TF_WORKSPACE=your_workspace	select a workspace
TF_REGISTRY_DISCOVERY_RETRY	configure the max number of request retries
TF_REGISTRY_CLIENT_TIMEOUT=15	default client timeout for requests to the remote registry is 10s.

Variable precedence

high priority variable overrides low priority one(high to low)

1. -var and -var-file options on the command line, in the order they are provided.
2. . *.auto.tfvars or *.auto.tfvars.json files, processed in lexical order of their filenames.
3. terraform.tfvars.json file
4. terraform.tfvars file
5. Environment variables

Output Variables

output "instance_ip_addr" {
 value = aws_instance.server.private_ip
}

Meta-Argument

count

resource "aws_instance" "server" {
    count = 4 # create four similar EC2 instances
    ami           = "ami-a1b2c3d4"
    instance_type = "t2.micro"
    tags = {
        Name = "Server ${count.index}"
}}

for_each

• each.key — The map key
• each.value — The map value

for each

module "bucket" {
    for_each = toset(["assets", "media"])
    source   = "./publish_bucket"
    name     = "${each.key}_bucket"
}

Splat Expressions

If var.list is a list of objects that all have an attribute id, then a list of the ids could be produced with the following for expression:

[for o in var.list : o.id]

This is equivalent to the following splat expression:

var.list[*].id

lifecycle

Available for all resource blocks

• create_before_destroy
• prevent_destroy
• ignore_changes
• replace_triggered_by.

lifecycle

resource "azurerm_resource_group" "example" {
    lifecycle {
        create_before_destroy = true
    }}

depends_on

Handle hidden resource or module dependencies that Terraform cannot automatically infer.

resource "aws_instance" "example" {

    # Terraform can infer from this that the instance profile must
    # be created before the EC2 instance.
    
    iam_instance_profile = aws_iam_instance_profile.example

    # However, if software running in this EC2 instance needs access  to the S3 API in order to boot properly, there is also a "hidden"
    # dependency on the aws_iam_role_policy that Terraform cannot
    # automatically infer, so it must be declared explicitly:
   
    depends_on = [
        aws_iam_role_policy.example
    ]
}