Passing in variables assigned in Shell script - azure

Question

I am trying to run a Terraform deployment via a Shell script where within the Shell script I first dynamically collect the access key for my Azure storage account and assign it to a variable. I then want to use the variable in a -var assignment on the terraform command line. This method works great when configuring the backend for remote state but it is not working for doing a deployment. The other variables used in the template are being pulled from a terraform.tfvars file. Below is my Shell script and Terraform template:
Shell script:
#!/bin/bash
set -eo pipefail
subscription_name="Visual Studio Enterprise with MSDN"
tfstate_storage_resource_group="terraform-state-rg"
tfstate_storage_account="terraformtfstatesa"
az account set --subscription "$subscription_name"
tfstate_storage_access_key=$(
az storage account keys list \
--resource-group "$tfstate_storage_resource_group" \
--account-name "$tfstate_storage_account" \
--query '[0].value' -o tsv
)
echo $tfstate_storage_access_key
terraform apply \
-var "access_key=$tfstate_storage_access_key"
Deployment template:
provider "azurerm" {
subscription_id = "${var.sub_id}"
}
data "terraform_remote_state" "rg" {
backend = "azurerm"
config {
storage_account_name = "terraformtfstatesa"
container_name = "terraform-state"
key = "rg.stage.project.terraform.tfstate"
access_key = "${var.access_key}"
}
}
resource "azurerm_storage_account" "my_table" {
name = "${var.storage_account}"
resource_group_name = "${data.terraform_remote_state.rg.rgname}"
location = "${var.region}"
account_tier = "Standard"
account_replication_type = "LRS"
}
I have tried defining the variable in my terraform.tfvars file:
storage_account = "appastagesa"
les_table_name = "appatable
region = "eastus"
sub_id = "abc12345-099c-1234-1234-998899889988"
access_key = ""
The access_key definition appears to get ignored.
I then tried not using a terraform.tfvars file, and created the variables.tf file below:
variable storage_account {
description = "Name of the storage account to create"
default = "appastagesa"
}
variable les_table_name {
description = "Name of the App table to create"
default = "appatable"
}
variable region {
description = "The region where resources will be deployed (ex. eastus, eastus2, etc.)"
default = "eastus"
}
variable sub_id {
description = "The ID of the subscription to deploy into"
default = "abc12345-099c-1234-1234-998899889988"
}
variable access_key {}
I then modified my deploy.sh script to use the line below to run my terraform deployment:
terraform apply \
-var "access_key=$tfstate_storage_access_key" \
-var-file="variables.tf"
This results in the error invalid value "variables.tf" for flag -var-file: multiple map declarations not supported for variables Usage: terraform apply [options] [DIR-OR-PLAN] being thrown.

Answer 1

After playing with this for hours...I am almost embarrassed as to what the problem was but I am also frustrated with Terraform because of the time I wasted on this issue.
I had all of my variables defined in my variables.tf file with all but one having default values. For the one without a default value, I was passing it in as part of the command line. My command line was where the problem was. Because of all of the documentation I read, I thought I had to tell terraform what my variables file was by using the -var-file option. Turns out you don't and when I did it threw the error. Turns out all I had to do was use the -var option for the variable that had no defined default and terraform just automagically saw the variables.tf file. Frustrating. I am in love with Terraform but the one negative I would give it is that the documentation is lacking.