Update 2017-12-26: There’s now a more complete, step-by-step example of how to use terraform’s data resource, pip, and this decorator in the source.

Good morning!

Sometimes I have data I need to assemble during terraform’s apply phase, and I like to use Python helper scripts to do that. Awesomely, terraform natively supports using Python to populate the data resource:

data "external" "cars_count" { program = ["python", "${path.module}/get_cool_data.py"] query = { thing_to_count = "cars" } } output "cars_count" { value = "${data.external.cars_count.result.cars}" }

A slick, easy way to drop out of terraform and use Python to grab what you need (although it can get you in to trouble if you abuse it).

The Python script has to follow a protocol that defines formats, error handling, etc. It’s minimal but it’s fiddly, plus if you need more than one external data script it’s better to modularize than copy and paste, so I wrote a pip-installable decorator that implements the protocol for you. The source is also an example you can follow if you’d rather implement it yourself than add a dependency. Here’s how you use it:

from terraform_external_data import terraform_external_data @terraform_external_data def get_cool_data(query): return {query['thing_to_count']: '3'} if __name__ == '__main__': get_cool_data()

It’s available on PyPI, just pip install terraform_external_data .

Happy terraforming!

Adam

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