Querying External Data with Terraform

Learn how to query external data sources using Terraform to enhance your infrastructure configurations.

Introduction to Data Sources

Terraform provides data sources that allow you to fetch and compute data from external sources for use within your configuration.

Using Data Sources

To use a data source, you declare it in your Terraform configuration file with the necessary provider and query details.

Example:

    
data "aws_ami" "latest_ubuntu" {
  most_recent = true
  owners      = ["099720109477"] # Canonical

  filter {
    name   = "name"
    values = ["ubuntu/images/hvm-ssd/ubuntu-focal-20.04-amd64-server-*"]
  }
}
    
  

Querying Data

After declaring the data source, you can query the desired information using the output syntax.

Example Output:

    
output "ubuntu_ami_id" {
  value = data.aws_ami.latest_ubuntu.id
}
    
  

Conclusion

Data sources in Terraform are powerful tools that allow you to incorporate dynamic data from external sources into your infrastructure as code. By querying external data, you can create more flexible and maintainable configurations.