Cloud block with dynamic workspace name

Terraform Terraform Cloud & Enterprise
#1

I’m trying to use Terraform Cloud with the cloud block, but I need to set the workspace name dynamically depending on the environment: dev or prod.

Like this:

terraform {
  cloud {
    organization = "my-org"
    workspaces {
      name = "my-workspace-${var.env}" // <- Not allowed
    }
  }
}

Unfortunately, variables are not allowed in the cloud block, so I am stuck :frowning_face:.

I could write a script to generate main terraform file with a hard-coded workspace name but that seems ridiculous.

Why is it so hard to do such a simple thing as choose the workspace programmatically? How can I get around this?

Thank you

#2

Hi @david-wb,

The intended design here is for you to add tags to your workspaces and then use the tags argument instead of the name argument. For example, if you add a tag my-workspace to both workspaces (which I assume in practice is more like a component/subsystem/application name in your system) then you can specify that this configuration applies to both by specifying that tag:

terraform {
  cloud {
    organization = "my-org"
    workspaces {
      tags = ["my-workspace"]
    }
  }
}

If you have added that tag to both the my-workspace-dev and my-workspace-prod workspaces then terraform workspace list should show them both, and terraform workspace select should allow you to choose between them.

#3

But this is running in a CI environment @apparentlymart. I need a way to do it programmatically in an automated fashion without manually selecting anything.

Using a script to generate a tf file with the workspace name hard coded works just fine, but it’s ugly.

#4

Hey @david-wb,

The environment variable TF_WORKSPACE should be respected, allowing you to programmatically select the workspace name. That’s documented here. Can you try that and let us know if it does not?

Thanks!

#5

Hey guys. This assumes that my-workspace-dev and my-workspace-prod already exist in Terraform Cloud, correct? For my use case, I need to create new dynamic terraform cloud workspaces using a CLI-driven workflow in a CI/CD pipeline. Is there a way to do that?

According to the docs

Terraform Cloud will not create a new workspace from this variable; the workspace must exist in the specified organization.