variable not defined vs variable set to null - terraform

I try to pass some parameters to the google pub sub terraform module where they use a code block like this
for_each = var.create_topic ? { for i in var.push_subscriptions : i.name => i if try(i.dead_letter_topic, "") != "" } : {}
When I pass variables for the push_subscription like:
push_subscriptions = [
{
name = "push"
push_endpoint = "https://example.com/push"
dead_letter_topic = null
},
]
I will get an error with:
on .terraform/modules/pubsub/main.tf line 62, in resource "google_pubsub_topic_iam_member" "push_topic_binding":
│ 62: topic = each.value.dead_letter_topic
│
│ The argument "topic" is required, but no definition was found.
When I completely remove the dead_letter_topic variable it works fine.
Im wondering why this is the case? I thought (and read) when something is null then terraform threads it like it does not exist? So in my opinion both options should result in the same outcome.

Your code is trying to create a google_pubsub_topic_iam_member by passing the value of dead_letter_topic as the topic value for that resource. The topic value of that resource is a required value that you have to set. If dead_letter_topic is null, then you are trying to create a google_pubsub_topic_iam_member that has a null or empty string for a topic.
Terraform treats optional attributes as "unset" when you pass a null value. You can't do that at all for required attributes.
I believe the logic in your for_each is flawed. I think part of the problem may be that you are turning a list into a map, instead of a set.

Related

Understanding when to use each.key vs each.value in Terraform

I'd appreciate some help in better understanding when to use each.key vs each.value.
I have a transit gateway and wanted to ensure that any new transit gateway attachment is propagated into all available route tables. My code looked like this:
locals {
propagation_rt_ids = {
tgw-rt-001 = "tgw-rtb-xxx”
tgw-rt-002 = "tgw-rtb-yyy"
tgw-rt-003 = "tgw-rtb-zzz”
}
}
resource "aws_ec2_transit_gateway_route_table_propagation" "propagate_attachment” {
for_each = local.propagation_rt_ids
transit_gateway_attachment_id = data.aws_ec2_transit_gateway_vpc_attachment.tenant_id.id
transit_gateway_route_table_id = local.propagation_rt_ids[each.value]
}
When I referenced each.value and ran terraform plan, I got errors saying: The given key does not identify an element in this collection value
I eventually found a similar example where [each.key] was used. I tried [each.key] and it worked.
What I am trying to understand is this:
I was thinking that the “transit_gateway_route_table_id” argument under aws_ec2_transit_gateway_route_table_propagation is expecting a route table ID as its value. So I assumed the correct thing to specify there was local.propagation_rt_ids[each.value] which should retrieve each of the route-table IDs in the key/value pair. Why is [each.value] not valid in this scenario?
Maps and objects in terraform are represented by key/value pairs. From the documentation [1]:
{
name = "John"
age = 52
}
Map attributes can be accessed by using either the dot notation, e.g., local.propagation_rt_ids.tgw-rt-001 or using a square-bracket index notation local.propagation_rt_ids["tgw-rt-001"]. So, for maps, in order to get a value of an attribute, you have to reference a certain key. If we take the example you posted and use terraform console:
> local.propagation_rt_ids
{
"tgw-rt-001" = "tgw-rtb-xxx" # key = value
"tgw-rt-002" = "tgw-rtb-yyy" # key = value
"tgw-rt-003" = "tgw-rtb-zzz" # key = value
}
> local.propagation_rt_ids.tgw-rt-001
"tgw-rtb-xxx"
> local.propagation_rt_ids["tgw-rt-001"]
"tgw-rtb-xxx"
Now, if I were to try and reference a value instead of a key:
> local.propagation_rt_ids["tgw-rtb-xxx"]
╷
│ Error: Invalid index
│
│ on <console-input> line 1:
│ (source code not available)
│
│ The given key does not identify an element in this collection value.
╵
The first example works, because the attribute value is being fetched by using one of the keys, i.e. "tgw-rt-001". In the second example, the error is the same as the one you got, because I tried to get an attribute value based on a key that does not exist, as it is in fact a value. In other words, a key references a value but a value references nothing, so something like:
key1 -> value1 -> no reference
key2 -> value2 -> no reference
key3 -> value3 -> no reference
[1] https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/language/expressions/types#maps-objects

How to solve for_each + "Terraform cannot predict how many instances will be created" issue?

I am trying to create a GCP project with this:
module "project-factory" {
source = "terraform-google-modules/project-factory/google"
version = "11.2.3"
name = var.project_name
random_project_id = "true"
org_id = var.organization_id
folder_id = var.folder_id
billing_account = var.billing_account
activate_apis = [
"iam.googleapis.com",
"run.googleapis.com"
]
}
After that, I am trying to create a service account, like so:
module "service_accounts" {
source = "terraform-google-modules/service-accounts/google"
version = "4.0.3"
project_id = module.project-factory.project_id
generate_keys = "true"
names = ["backend-runner"]
project_roles = [
"${module.project-factory.project_id}=>roles/cloudsql.client",
"${module.project-factory.project_id}=>roles/pubsub.publisher"
]
}
To be honest, I am fairly new to Terraform. I have read a few answers on the topic (this and this) but I am unable to understand how that would apply here.
I am getting the error:
│ Error: Invalid for_each argument
│
│ on .terraform/modules/pubsub-exporter-service-account/main.tf line 47, in resource "google_project_iam_member" "project-roles":
│ 47: for_each = local.project_roles_map_data
│ ├────────────────
│ │ local.project_roles_map_data will be known only after apply
│
│ The "for_each" value depends on resource attributes that cannot be determined until apply, so Terraform cannot predict how many instances will be created. To work around this, use the
│ -target argument to first apply only the resources that the for_each depends on.
Looking forward to learn more about Terraform through this challenge.
With only parts of the configuration visible here I'm guessing a little bit, but let's see. You mentioned that you'd like to learn more about Terraform as part of this exercise, so I'm going to go into a lot of detail about the chain here to explain why I'm recommending what I'm going to recommend, though you can skip to the end if you find this extra detail uninteresting.
We'll start with that first module's definition of its project_id output value:
output "project_id" {
value = module.project-factory.project_id
}
module.project-factory here is referring to a nested module call, so we need to look one level deeper in the nested module terraform-google-modules/project-factory/google//modules/core_project_factory:
output "project_id" {
value = module.project_services.project_id
depends_on = [
module.project_services,
google_project.main,
google_compute_shared_vpc_service_project.shared_vpc_attachment,
google_compute_shared_vpc_host_project.shared_vpc_host,
]
}
Another nested module call! 😬 That one declares its project_id like this:
output "project_id" {
description = "The GCP project you want to enable APIs on"
value = element(concat([for v in google_project_service.project_services : v.project], [var.project_id]), 0)
}
Phew! 😅 Finally an actual resource. This expression in this case seems to be taking the project attribute of a google_project_service resource instance, or potentially taking it from var.project_id if that resource was disabled in this instance of the module. Let's have a look at the google_project_service.project_services definition:
resource "google_project_service" "project_services" {
for_each = local.services
project = var.project_id
service = each.value
disable_on_destroy = var.disable_services_on_destroy
disable_dependent_services = var.disable_dependent_services
}
project here is set to var.project_id, so it seems like either way this innermost project_id output just reflects back the value of the project_id input variable, so we need to jump back up one level and look at the module call to this module to see what that was set to:
module "project_services" {
source = "../project_services"
project_id = google_project.main.project_id
activate_apis = local.activate_apis
activate_api_identities = var.activate_api_identities
disable_services_on_destroy = var.disable_services_on_destroy
disable_dependent_services = var.disable_dependent_services
}
project_id is set to the project_id attribute of google_project.main:
resource "google_project" "main" {
name = var.name
project_id = local.temp_project_id
org_id = local.project_org_id
folder_id = local.project_folder_id
billing_account = var.billing_account
auto_create_network = var.auto_create_network
labels = var.labels
}
project_id here is set to local.temp_project_id, which is declared further up in the same file:
temp_project_id = var.random_project_id ? format(
"%s-%s",
local.base_project_id,
random_id.random_project_id_suffix.hex,
) : local.base_project_id
This expression includes a reference to random_id.random_project_id_suffix.hex, and .hex is a result attribute from random_id, and so its value won't be known until apply time due to how that random_id resource type is implemented. (It generates a random value during the apply step and saves it in the state so it'll stay consistent on future runs.)
This means that (after all of this indirection) module.project-factory.project_id in your module is not a value defined statically in the configuration, and might instead be decided dynamically during the apply step. That means it's not an appropriate value to use as part of the instance key of a resource, and thus not appropriate to use as a key in a for_each map.
Unfortunately the use of for_each here is hidden inside this other module terraform-google-modules/service-accounts/google, and so we'll need to have a look at that one too and see how it's making use of the project_roles input variable. First, let's look at the specific resource block the error message was talking about:
resource "google_project_iam_member" "project-roles" {
for_each = local.project_roles_map_data
project = element(
split(
"=>",
each.value.role
),
0,
)
role = element(
split(
"=>",
each.value.role
),
1,
)
member = "serviceAccount:${google_service_account.service_accounts[each.value.name].email}"
}
There's a couple somewhat-complex things going on here, but the most relevant thing for what we're looking at here is that this resource configuration is creating multiple instances based on the content of local.project_roles_map_data. Let's look at local.project_roles_map_data now:
project_roles_map_data = zipmap(
[for pair in local.name_role_pairs : "${pair[0]}-${pair[1]}"],
[for pair in local.name_role_pairs : {
name = pair[0]
role = pair[1]
}]
)
A little more complexity here that isn't super important to what we're looking for; the main thing to consider here is that this is constructing a map whose keys are built from element zero and element one of local.name_role_pairs, which is declared directly above, along with local.names that it refers to:
names = toset(var.names)
name_role_pairs = setproduct(local.names, toset(var.project_roles))
So what we've learned here is that the values in var.names and the values in var.project_roles both contribute to the keys of the for_each on that resource, which means that neither of those variable values should contain anything decided dynamically during the apply step.
However, we've also learned (above) that the project and role arguments of google_project_iam_member.project-roles are derived from the prefixes of elements in the two lists you provided as names and project_roles in your own module call.
Let's return back to where we started then, with all of this extra information in mind:
module "service_accounts" {
source = "terraform-google-modules/service-accounts/google"
version = "4.0.3"
project_id = module.project-factory.project_id
generate_keys = "true"
names = ["backend-runner"]
project_roles = [
"${module.project-factory.project_id}=>roles/cloudsql.client",
"${module.project-factory.project_id}=>roles/pubsub.publisher"
]
}
We've learned that names and project_roles must both contain only static values decided in the configuration, and so it isn't appropriate to use module.project-factory.project_id because that won't be known until the random project ID has been generated during the apply step.
However, we also know that this module is expecting the prefix of each item in project_roles (the part before the =>) to be a valid project ID, so there isn't any other value that would be reasonable to use there.
Therefore we're at a bit of an empasse: this second module has a rather awkward design decision that it's trying to derive a both a local instance key and a reference to a real remote object from the same value, and those two situations have conflicting requirements. But this isn't a module you created, so you can't easily modify it to address that design quirk.
Given that, I see two possible approaches to move forward, neither ideal but both workable with some caveats:
You could take the approach the error message offered as a workaround, asking Terraform to plan and apply the resources in the first module alone first, and then plan and apply the rest on a subsequent run once the project ID is already decided and recorded in the state:
terraform apply -target=module.factory
terraform apply
Although it's annoying to have to do this initial create in two steps, it does at least only matter for the initial creation of this infrastructure. If you update it later then you won't need to repeat this two-step process unless you've changed the configuration in a way that requires generating a new project ID.
While working through the above we saw that this approach of generating and returning a random project ID was optional based on that first module's var.random_project_id, which you set to "true" in your configuration. Without that, the project_id output would be just a copy of your given name argument, which seems to be statically defined by reference to a root module variable.
Unless you particularly need that random suffix on your project ID, you could leave random_project_id unset and thus just get the project ID set to the same static value as your var.project_name, which should then be an acceptable value to use as a for_each key.
Ideally this second module would be designed to separate the values it's using for instance keys from the values it's using to refer to real remote objects, and thus it would be possible to use the random-suffixed name for the remote object but a statically-defined name for the local object. If this were a module under your control then I would've suggested a design change like that, but I assume the current unusual design of that third-party module (packing multiple values into a single string with a delimiter) is a compromise resulting from wanting to retain backward compatibility with an earlier iteration of the module.

Terraform: Create block only if variable matches certain values

I'm trying to create a module that creates interconnect-attachments, but some parts are only defined if the attachment is using ipsec encryption and if it's not, that block must not exist in the resource else it causes an error (even if it only contains a value set to null.)
I've tried using a dynamic, but I can't quite get the layout right to have it work:
resource "google_compute_interconnect_attachment" "interconnect-attachment" {
project = var.project
region = var.region
name = var.name
edge_availability_domain = var.availability_domain
type = var.type
router = google_compute_router.router.name
encryption = var.encryption
dynamic "ipsec_internal_addresses" {
for_each = var.encryption != "IPSEC" ? [] : [1]
content {
var.address
}
}
}
Essentially, if var.encryption is set to IPSEC then i want the following block included:
ipsec_internal_addresses = [
var.address,
]
The other issue is it appears a dynamic block expects some kind of assignment to happen, but the terraform examples just have the value inside the ipsec_internal_addresses so I'm unsure how to to achieve this.
ipsec_internal_addresses is not a block in the google_compute_interconnect_attachment resource. It is an argument. Therefore, you can use the normal pattern for specifying optional arguments where the conditional returns a null type if you do not want to specify a value. Using your conditional and variables:
ipsec_internal_addresses = var.encryption == "IPSEC" ? [var.address] : null
which will return and assign your [var.address] to ipsec_internal_addresses when var.encryption equals the string IPSEC. Otherwise, it will return null and the ipsec_internal_addresses argument will be ignored.

Get type of a variable in Terraform

Is there a way to detect the type of a variable in Terraform? Say, I have a module input variable of type any, can I do some kind of switch, depending on the type?
variable "details" {
type = any
}
local {
name = var.details.type == map ? var.details["name"] : var.details
}
What I want to archive is, to be able to pass either a string as shorthand or a complex object with additional keys.
module "foo" {
details = "my-name"
}
or
module "foo" {
details = {
name = "my-name"
age = "40"
}
}
I know this example doesn't make much sense and you would like to suggest to instead use two input vars with defaults. This example is just reduced to the minimal (non)working example. The end goal is to have a list of IAM policy statements, so it is going to be a list of lists of objects.
Terraform v0.12.20 introduced a new function try which can be used to concisely select between different ways of retrieving a value, taking the first one that wouldn't produce an error.
variable "person" {
type = any
# Optional: add a validation rule to catch invalid types,
# though this feature remains experimental in Terraform v0.12.20.
# (Since this is experimental at the time of writing, it might
# see breaking changes before final release.)
validation {
# If var.person.name succeeds then var.person is an object
# which has at least the "name" attribute.
condition = can(var.person.name) || can(tostring(var.person))
error_message = "The \"person\" argument must either be a person object or a string giving a person's name."
}
}
locals {
person = try(
# The value of the first successful expression will be taken.
{name = tostring(var.person)}, # If the value is just a string
var.person, # If the value is not a string (directly an object)
)
}
Elsewhere in the configuration you can then write local.person.name to obtain the name, regardless of whether the caller passed an object or a string.
The remainder of this answer is an earlier response that now applies only to Terraform versions between v0.12.0 and v0.12.20.
There is no mechanism for switching behavior based on types in Terraform. Generally Terraform favors selecting specific types so that module callers are always consistent and Terraform can fully validate the given values, even if that means a little extra verbosity in simpler cases.
I would recommend just defining details as an object and having the caller explicitly write out the object with the name attribute, in order to be more explicit and consistent:
variable "details" {
type = object({
name = string
})
}
module "example" {
source = "./modules/example"
details = { name = "example" }
}
If you need to support two different types, the closest thing in the Terraform language would be to define two variables and detect which one is null:
variable "details" {
type = object({
name = string
})
default = null
}
variable "name" {
type = string
default = null
}
local {
name = var.name != null ? var.name : var.details.name
}
However since there is not currently a way to express that exactly one of those two must be specified, the module configuration you write must be ready to deal with the possibility that both will be set (in the above example, var.name takes priority) or that neither will be set (in the above example, the expression would produce an error, but not a very caller-friendly one).
terraform v1.0+ introduces a new function type() for this purpose. See https://www.terraform.io/language/functions/type

Terraform - How to restrict an input variable to a list of possible choices

I have a variable that the user will input during run time. Lets say the variable name is region. However, I want the execution to be only successful if the user picks a value from one of the values defined in a list/ choices.
how can I restrict it so the user's selection has to match values that are considered acceptable in the variable definition?
Stumbled across this question.
Since v0.13.0 input validation has been possible directly via the input variables. Thus you can actually achieve this with a snippet such as below.
variable "test_variable" {
type = string
description = "some test value"
validation {
condition = contains(["item1", "item2", "item3"], var.test_variable)
error_message = "Valid values for var: test_variable are (item1, item2, item3)."
}
}
Read more here - https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/custom-variable-validation-in-terraform-0-13
One solution:
variable "values_list" {
description = "acceptable values"
type = "list"
default = ["true", "false"]
}
variable "somevar" {
description = "must be true or false"
}
resource "null_resource" "is_variable_value_valid" {
count = "${contains(var.values_list, var.somevar) == true ? 0 : 1}"
"ERROR: The somevar value can only be: true or false" = true
}
If you pass a value different than "true" or "false" for the "somevar" variable, Terraform will throw an error and stop. The disadvantage is that you have to list all values in the default block of values_list.
Source: https://stackoverflow.com/a/54256780/1364793
Terraform currently has no first-class feature for this, but you can achieve the desired effect (albeit with a less-helpful error message) by asking Terraform to look the value up in a map:
variable "example" {
description = "must be a, b, or c"
}
locals {
allowed_example_values = { for v in ["a", "b", "c"] : v => v }
checked_example = local.allowed_example_values[var.example] # will fail if var.example is invalid
}
Because the values in the allowed_example_values map are the same as the keys, you can then use local.checked_example in place of var.example everywhere else in the module to set up the dependency graph such that it's impossible for an invalid value to be used.
Some caveats/limitations:
You can't customize the error message that Terraform will return when the value is invalid. Instead, Terraform will return the generic error about the key not matching any element in the map. However, it will include the source code snippet from the affected line in the error message (in Terraform 0.12 or later) so the comment at the end of that line should be visible in the error message and thus provide an additional clue to the user as to what might be wrong.
This works fully only for string values, because map keys are always strings in Terraform. Using other primitive types can work as a result of Terraform's automatic conversions from bool and number to string, but you should be sure to explicitly declare the type of the variable (using e.g. type = number) to ensure that Terraform will normalize incoming values into the expected type before looking them up in the map. This technique will not work at all for collection and structural types.
I wouldn't suggest using strings "true" and "false" since Terraform has a bool type which can represent that more intuitively. If you are using Terraform 0.11 and earlier then it's not possible to constrain to bool, but in Terraform 0.12 and later you can declare a variable as type = bool and then Terraform will handle the validation automatically.

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