CODEWITHSUNDEEP
chef-infraterraform
maltman
maltman

Reputation: 454

Passing attribute from Terraform to Chef

I am trying to figure out how to pass a value from Terraform to Chef. I have an attribute set in Terraform.

run_list = ['cookbook::default']
attributes_json = <<EOF
{
  "department": "CC"
}
EOF

Here is my Chef recipe

    department = ''

    if node['platform_family'] == 'windows'
      user 'test' do
        password 'hash'
        comment department
      end
      if department == 'CC'
        group 'Administrators' do
          action :modify
          members 'test'
          append true
        end
      end
    end

When I run Terraform, it completes successfully but the conditional for department is not met so it does not add test account to admin group. I plugged department into the user comment as well so I could see the value (if anything). Nothing is being passed.

Can anyone see what I am doing wrong?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 388

Answers (2)

maltman
maltman

Reputation: 454

OK so I finally figured out how to get the values. I made a single non-critical change to the Terraform json just in case I wanted to pass extra values.

attributes_json = <<EOF
{
  "access": {
    "department": "CC"
  }
}
EOF

However, I was not referencing this value correctly in Chef.

department = node['access']['department']

if node['platform_family'] == 'windows'
  user 'test' do
    password 'hash'
    comment department
  end
  if department == 'CC'
    group 'Administrators' do
      action :modify
      members 'test'
      append true
    end
  end
end

I needed to set the attribute created in Chef equal to the value coming from Terraform. Hope this helps someone else.

Upvotes: 1

Matthew Schuchard
Matthew Schuchard

Reputation: 28774

When you pass JSON to the json_attributes argument in Terraform's Chef provisioner, it is cast as a hash and added to the node hash when passed to Chef. Therefore, your values are accessible as key-value pairs within the hash assigned to node, and your specific key is department and value is CC. Therefore, the lookup syntax for this in Chef (and Ruby) would be:

node['department']

Updating your code in Chef we arrive at:

if node['department'] == 'CC'
  group 'Administrators' do
    action :modify
    members 'test'
    append true
  end
end

Upvotes: 1

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