Hey everyone,
I have been working with Terraform & I am trying to clean up my setups by breaking things into modules. It is going okay but I have hit a few bumps. 
I am dealing with passing tons of variables into modules & it is getting a bit messy. I am not sure if I should split modules further or just rethink how I am organizing everything. Also, I keep going back and forth on when to use locals vs variables — any simple rule of thumb?
I followed a Python tutorial that emphasized keeping code DRY and modular & it made me realize I want to level up my Terraform game too.
Also i have check this Using terraform-google-org-policy module still want advice. If anyone has a good structure they follow or any best practices for naming, module layout or managing outputs cleanly, I want to hear it.
Thank you.
I tend to use locals for a few things
- Mangling / restructuring data internally within a module
- Things that you want to define centrally or want to DRY up a bit, but don’t necessarily want to document with tf-docs or allow a user to modify.
Setting sensible defaults is one other way that you can avoid needing to pass too many variables in, but I guess it all depends on what you’re trying to do, and how variable your use cases are.
Using data structures (like a map or object) can be another way to manage resources via modules without too many different parameters, but that can have its own pitfalls at times, and you’ll likely want to invest time into figuring out how to validate them properly.
ps - if you post a snippet / sanitized example (wrapped in a code block) of your variables and how you’re using them, maybe folks would have some other suggestions.