Terraform: data reference from subdirectory

[sivarammedapati]

/base/data.tf

data "aws_ami" "ecs" {
  filter {
    name   = "state"
    values = ["available"]
  }
  filter {
    name   = "name"
    values = ["amzn-ami-*-amazon-ecs-optimized"]
  }  most_recent = true
}

/base/test.tf

provider "aws" {
  region = "us-east-1"
}
output "ami" {
  value = "${data.aws_ami.ecs.id}"
}

The above works when both files are in same directory. But how can I refer to ami id from /base/data.tf when test.tf is in a sub directory of base say /base/new/test.tf

[tombuildsstuff]

Hi @sivarammedapati

Thanks for opening this issue.

In general we'd recommend asking questions about Terraform Configurations on one of the community sources listed here (this issue tracker is more intended for bugs with Terraform).

That said - this can be achieved using Modules - where the "new directory" in your example exposes Inputs and Outputs as needed for the configuration it contains; and this is then called from the Terraform Configuration in the root. There's more information on this page - however you should be able to reference the module in the sub-directory like so:

module "foo" {
  source = "./new"
  # assign any variables explicitly defined in the module such as
  foo = "bar"
}

output "bar" {
  value = "${module.foo.some_output}"
}

The variable foo needs to be explicitly defined in the child module; as does the output "some_output" - as shown in this example below:

variable "foo" {}

output "some_output" {
  value = "hello"
}

# .. rest of the configuration

Since this isn't a bug in Terraform I'm going to close this issue for the moment - however I believe the examples above + the documentation should be what you're after :)

Thanks!

[giwiro]

I recently had this problem and this article helped me: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/terraform-up-and/9781491977071/ch04.html

[hashibot[bot]]

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