New Project

We’ll use terraspace new project to generate a new terraspace project.

terraspace new project infra --plugin aws --examples

For this tutorial, we’re using the --examples option to generate a starter example.

$ terraspace new project infra --plugin aws --examples
=> Creating new project called infra.
      create  infra
      create  infra/.gitignore
       exist  infra
      create  infra/config/terraform/backend.tf
      create  infra/config/terraform/provider.tf
=> Creating new module called example.
      create  infra/app/modules/example
      create  infra/app/modules/example/main.tf
      create  infra/app/modules/example/outputs.tf
      create  infra/app/modules/example/variables.tf
=> Creating new stack called demo.
      create  infra/app/stacks/demo
      create  infra/app/stacks/demo/main.tf
      create  infra/app/stacks/demo/outputs.tf
      create  infra/app/stacks/demo/variables.tf
$ cd infra # and start checking out the files

In this case, the --plugin aws is optional, since the default provider is aws. We’re using it in this tutorial just for clarity.

For more information about the folders see Project Structure.

Config Files

Let’s look at config/terraform/backend.tf

terraform {
  backend "s3" {
    bucket         = "<%= expansion('terraform-state-:ACCOUNT-:REGION-:ENV') %>"
    key            = "<%= expansion(':PROJECT/:TYPE_DIR/:APP/:ROLE/:MOD_NAME/:ENV/:EXTRA/:REGION/terraform.tfstate') %>"
    region         = "<%= expansion(':REGION') %>"
    encrypt        = true
    dynamodb_table = "terraform_locks"
  }
}

If you’re already familiar with terraform, then you’ll probably notice that there’s ERB templating. Terraspace allows you use templating in your tf files. When we deploy the terraspace project, it compiles the config file down to a standard terraform file. The templating is particularly useful in backend.tf as it gives dynamic control over bucket, key, and region.

For variables available see: Backend Config Variables

When we later deploy, the backend.tf gets compiled down to a standard terraform tf file. Terraspace will then automatically create the s3 bucket and dynamodb table for you.

Next, let’s take a look at the config/terraform/provider.tf file.

# provider "aws" {
#   region = "us-east-1"
# }

You can see it’s actually commented out. This is because we have already configured AWS_PROFILE and AWS_REGION. It should be fine to leave the generated config files as-is for this tutorial. For real-world use, you may want to pin down the terraform version.

Terraspace Cloud

You can configure your app settings to enable Terraspace Cloud. This provides a nice GUI interface to track your plans and updates. This is optional.

config/app.rb

Terraspace.configure do |config|
  config.logger.level = :info
  # config.cloud.org = "ORG" # <= change to the Terraspace Cloud org you've created
end

To learn more:

Next, we’ll review generated app folder files.

More tools: