»Data Sources

Terraform data sources fetch information from external APIs and from other Terraform configurations. For example, you may want to import disk image IDs from a cloud provider or share data between configurations for different parts of your infrastructure.

»When to Use Data Sources

Use data sources when you need to reference dynamic data that is not known until after Terraform applies a configuration. For example, instance IDs that cloud providers assign on creation.

When data is static or you know the values before synthesizing your code, we recommend creating static references in your preferred programming language or using Terraform variables.

»Define Data Sources

Data Sources are part of a Terraform provider. All classes representing Data Sources are prefixed with Data.

In the TypeScript example below, a Terraform data source fetches the AWS region DataAwsRegion from the AWS provider.

.....
import { DataAwsRegion } from './gen/providers/aws'

export class HelloTerraform extends TerraformStack {
    constructor(scope: Construct, id: string) {
        super(scope, id);

        .....
        const region = new DataAwsRegion(this, 'region')
    }
}

.....
import { DataAwsRegion } from './gen/providers/aws'

export class HelloTerraform extends TerraformStack {
    constructor(scope: Construct, id: string) {
        super(scope, id);

        .....
        const region = new DataAwsRegion(this, 'region')
    }
}

»Remote State Data Source

The terraform_remote_state data source retrieves state data from a remote Terraform backend. This allows you to use the root-level outputs of one or more Terraform configurations as input data for another configuration. For example, a core infrastructure team can handle building the core machines, networking, etc. and then expose some information to other teams that allows them to run their own infrastructure. Refer to the Remote Backends page for more details.

The TypeScript example below uses the global DataTerraformRemoteState to reference a Terraform Output of another Terraform configuration.

.....
import { DataTerraformRemoteState } from 'cdktf';

export class HelloTerraform extends TerraformStack {
    constructor(scope: Construct, id: string) {
        super(scope, id);

        .....
        const remoteState = new DataTerraformRemoteState(this, {
            organization: 'hashicorp',
            workspaces: {
                name: 'vpc-prod'
            }
        });

        new aws.EC2.Instance(this, 'foo', {
            ....
            subnetId: remoteState.get('subnet_id')
        });
    }
}

.....
import { DataTerraformRemoteState } from 'cdktf';

export class HelloTerraform extends TerraformStack {
    constructor(scope: Construct, id: string) {
        super(scope, id);

        .....
        const remoteState = new DataTerraformRemoteState(this, {
            organization: 'hashicorp',
            workspaces: {
                name: 'vpc-prod'
            }
        });

        new aws.EC2.Instance(this, 'foo', {
            ....
            subnetId: remoteState.get('subnet_id')
        });
    }
}