Using Terraform to load a single file from git repo - terraform

Question

We want to load a file from a git repo and place it into a parameter store. The file contains configuration data that is custom to each of several organizational-accounts, which are being constructed with Terraform and are otherwise identical. The data will be stored in AWS SM Parameter Store.
For example the Terraform code to store a string as a parameter is:
resource "aws_ssm_parameter" "parameter_config" {
name = "config_object"
type = "String"
value = "long json string with configuration data"
}
I know there is a file() operator (reference) from Terraform and I know that TF can load files from remote git repos, but I'm not sure if I can bring all this together.

Answer 1

There are a few ways that you can do this.
The first would be to use the github provider with the github_repository_file data source:
terraform {
required_providers {
github = {
source = "integrations/github"
version = "5.12.0"
}
}
}
provider "github" {
token = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
owner = "org-name"
}
data "github_repository_file" "config" {
repository = "my-repo"
branch = "master"
file = "config-file"
}
resource "aws_ssm_parameter" "parameter_config" {
name = "config_object"
type = "String"
value = data.github_repository_file.config.content
}
You could also do this with the http provider:
data "http" "config" {
url = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/my-org/my-repo/master/config-file"
}
resource "aws_ssm_parameter" "parameter_config" {
name = "config_object"
type = "String"
value = data.http.config.response_body
}
Keep in mind that you may get multiline string delimiters when using the http data source method. (e.g.: <<EOT ... EOT)