Conditionally create a single module in Terraform - terraform

Question

I have been trying to conditionally use a module from the root module, so that for certain environments this module is not created. Many people claim that by setting the count in the module to either 0 or 1 using a conditional does the trick.
module "conditionally_used_module" {
source = "./modules/my_module"
count = (var.create == true) ? 1 : 0
}
However, this changes the type of conditionally_used_module: instead of an object (or map) we will have a list (or tuple) containing a single object. Is there another way to achieve this, that does not imply changing the type of the module?

Answer 1

To conditionally create a module you can use a variable, lets say it's called create_module in the variables.tf file of the module conditionally_used_module.
Then for every resource inside the conditionally_used_module module you will use the count to conditionally create or not that specific resource.
The following example should work and provide you with the desired effect.
# Set a variable to know if the resources inside the module should be created
module "conditionally_used_module" {
source = "./modules/my_module"
create_module = var.create
}
# Inside the conditionally_used_module file
# ( ./modules/my_module/main.tf ) most likely
# for every resource inside use the count to create or not each resource
resource "resource_type" "resource_name" {
count = var.create_module ? 1 : 0
... other resource properties
}

Answer 2

I used this in conjunction with workspaces to build a resource only for certain envs. The advantage is for me that I get a single terraform.tfvars file to control the all the environments structure for a project.
Inside main.tf:
workspace = terraform.workspace
#....
module "gcp-internal-lb" {
source = "../../modules/gcp-internal-lb"
# Deploy conditionally based on deploy_internal_lb variable
count = var.deploy_internal_lb[local.workspace] == true ? 1 : 0
# module attributes here
}
Then in variables.tf
variable "deploy_internal_lb" {
description = "Set to true if you want to create an internal LB"
type = map(string)
}
And in terraform.tfvars:
deploy_internal_lb = {
# DEV
myproject-dev = false
# QA
myproject-qa = false
# PROD
myproject-prod = true
}
I hope it helps.