Syntax¶

A Terraform configuration consists of one or more .tf files, which are built around blocks, labels and arguments:

<block> "<label>" {
  <argument> = <value>
}

In this tutorial, you'll get familiar with the three most common block types in Terraform:

Provider blocks
Resource blocks
Data blocks

Blocks¶

Provider blocks¶

Terraform is a cloud agnostic infrastructure as code tool, which means that it can be used across various different cloud providers (AWS, GCP and Azure among others).

To work with a given cloud provider, Terraform needs to install a plugin for that provider. Plugins are available in the Terraform Registry.

Use provider blocks to configure provider plugins:

provider "<provider>" {
  <argument> = <value>
}

For example, to configure the Azure provider plugin:

provider "azurerm" {
  features {}
}

Resource blocks¶

Use resource blocks to create new resources:

resource "<provider>_<resource>" "<name>" {
  <argument> = <value>
}

For example:

resource "azurerm_storage_account" "example" {
  name                     = "examplest"
  resource_group_name      = "example-rg"
  location                 = "northeurope"
  account_tier             = "Standard"
  account_replication_type = "LRS"
}

Data blocks¶

Use data blocks to read an existing resource:

data "<provider>_<resource>" "<name>" {
  <argument> = <value>
}

For example:

data "azurerm_resource_group" "example" {
  name = "example-rg"
}

References¶

Blocks can reference arguments and attributes from other blocks.

For example:

data "azurerm_resource_group" "example" {
  name = "example-rg"
}

resource "azurerm_storage_account" "example" {
  name                     = "examplest"
  resource_group_name      = data.azurerm_resource_group.example.name
  location                 = data.azurerm_resource_group.example.location
  account_tier             = "Standard"
  account_replication_type = "LRS"
}

Now that we're familiar with the Terraform block types and references, let's start creating some resources!