This yeoman generator will create scaffolding for creating terraform for AWS resources.

I decided to create a terraform generator after seeing William Tsoi's excellent generator-terraform-environments project. I like to use a different directory structure for my projects, so I decided to create a generator that would use my preferred layout.

I'm eager to make this as usable as possible, so please consider entering bug reports and/or feature requests as needed.

Yeoman requires Node.js and npm. You can install that from here.

Once you have Node.js installed, then install Yeoman.

npm install -g yo

Now you can install generator-tf-proj.

npm install -g generator-tf-proj

Note: You can also clone the project from github, and then use npm link in the project's root directory. The link will make it so that the terraform project generator will act like you installed it using npm install -g generator-tf-proj.

npm link

Generate your new project using the yeoman command:

mkdir -p ~/my-projects/my-cool-project
cd ~/my-projects/my-cool-project
yo tf-proj

At this point you will be prompted to answer a number of questions about your project so that the scaffolding logic can build out the project structure.

The project description will be used on a generated README.md file. Enter a simple description of your project.

We'll set up a project structure that can be used for creating a solr cluster in AWS.

? Please provide a project description: Create a solr cluster in AWS.

This generator uses a set of group names for the AWS resource groups that will be deployed. The logical group folders will be created as a top level sub directory in your project directory. In our example, we will have one group of resources used for deploying solr nodes, and another for deploying zookeeper nodes.

? What are the logical group names for your project (separate multiple responses by comma)? solr,zookeeper

The next prompt is to get the names of the logical environments that you'll be using in AWS. The environment directories will be sub directories for each of your logical groups.

? What logical environments will you be running (separate multiple responses by comma)? sandbox,stage,prod

The regions prompt will allow you to specify the region sub directory names. The region sub directories will be created in the environment sub directories.

? What regions will you be running in (separate multiple responses by comma)? us-west-2

The components prompt is for specifying names for the AWS resource groups. You could use a name like networking for resources like VPCs, subnets, etc, and use ec2 for ec2 instances, autoscaling groups, target groups, etc.

? What components will you be running (separate multiple responses by comma)? ec2,networking,lambda,s3

Currently, the generator only supports AWS.

? What Terraform provider will you be using? (Full list of providers here: https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers): aws

Enter the provider version.

? What is the provider version? 1.7

The application_group can be used for setting a team name responsible for creating the resource. Our example is for creating a solr cluster, so we'll call our application group search.

? What is your application group name? search

The next property is for setting the name of the business owner - this can be left blank.

? Who is the business owner? Lee Wallen

The tf-proj generator currently supports s3 and local. The backend settings will be created in a backend.tf file that will reside in the ./<group>/<region>/<component> folder.

? What state backend will you be using? (Full list of backends here: https://www.terraform.io/docs/backend/types/index.html): s3

We stated above that we wanted to use S3 for storing the terraform state files, so now we'll be prompted for the S3 bucket name.

? Name of the S3 Bucket for remote terraform state: my-bucket

You'll be prompted for a prefix to use for terraform state file. The prefix will be used to create a key following the pattern found in the subgroups/environments/regions/backend.tf template file:

<%= backendBucketKeyPrefix %>/<%= environment %>/<%= region %>/terraform.tfstate

? The key prefix for the remote terraform state files: terraform-remote-state

Enter the region name to use for storing the S3 bucket.

? The AWS region for the S3 Bucket us-west-2

Enter the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) to use for writing to the S3 bucket.

? The default role arn to use when reading/writing the terraform state: arn:aws:iam::ENTER_AN_ACCOUNT_NUMBER:role/ENTER_A_ROLE_NAME

The generator will now create the directory structure for your project using the information from the prompts.

Note: The generator also sets account name values based on the environment name.

The output from them tf-proj generator shows the project structure being created:

create solr/sandbox/us-west-2/main.tf
create solr/sandbox/us-west-2/terraform.tfvars
create solr/sandbox/us-west-2/backend.tf
create README.md
create .gitignore
create zookeeper/sandbox/us-west-2/main.tf
create zookeeper/sandbox/us-west-2/terraform.tfvars
create zookeeper/sandbox/us-west-2/backend.tf
create solr/stage/us-west-2/main.tf
create solr/stage/us-west-2/terraform.tfvars
create solr/stage/us-west-2/backend.tf
create zookeeper/stage/us-west-2/main.tf
create zookeeper/stage/us-west-2/terraform.tfvars
create zookeeper/stage/us-west-2/backend.tf
create solr/prod/us-west-2/main.tf
create solr/prod/us-west-2/terraform.tfvars
create solr/prod/us-west-2/backend.tf
create zookeeper/prod/us-west-2/main.tf
create zookeeper/prod/us-west-2/terraform.tfvars
create zookeeper/prod/us-west-2/backend.tf
create modules/ec2/main.tf
create modules/ec2/ec2.tf
create modules/networking/main.tf
create modules/networking/networking.tf
create modules/lambda/main.tf
create modules/lambda/lambda.tf
create modules/s3/main.tf
create modules/s3/s3.tf

Here is the tree view of the created project structure:

 ~/Dev/home/test-proj> tree
.
├── README.md
├── modules
│   ├── ec2
│   │   ├── ec2.tf
│   │   └── main.tf
│   ├── lambda
│   │   ├── lambda.tf
│   │   └── main.tf
│   ├── networking
│   │   ├── main.tf
│   │   └── networking.tf
│   └── s3
│       ├── main.tf
│       └── s3.tf
├── solr
│   ├── prod
│   │   └── us-west-2
│   │       ├── backend.tf
│   │       ├── main.tf
│   │       └── terraform.tfvars
│   ├── sandbox
│   │   └── us-west-2
│   │       ├── backend.tf
│   │       ├── main.tf
│   │       └── terraform.tfvars
│   └── stage
│       └── us-west-2
│           ├── backend.tf
│           ├── main.tf
│           └── terraform.tfvars
└── zookeeper
    ├── prod
    │   └── us-west-2
    │       ├── backend.tf
    │       ├── main.tf
    │       └── terraform.tfvars
    ├── sandbox
    │   └── us-west-2
    │       ├── backend.tf
    │       ├── main.tf
    │       └── terraform.tfvars
    └── stage
        └── us-west-2
            ├── backend.tf
            ├── main.tf
            └── terraform.tfvars

19 directories, 27 files

The generator will populate the main.tf files in the region folders with module declarations for each of the specified AWS resource groups. It will also create variable declarations for the suggested tagging properties.

You'll want to create additional variables in the <group>/<environment>/<region>/main.tf and <group>/<environment>/<region>/terraform.tfvars files for configuring the AWS resources you want to use.

You'll also need to add any new variables for the components in the modules/<omponent>/main.tf file and reference that variable in the modules/<component>/<component>.tf file.

For example, to add an AMI ID for the us-west-2 prod solr ec2 instances, then you'll update the following files:

│   └── ec2
│       ├── ec2.tf
│       └── main.tf
└── solr
    └── prod
        └── us-west-2
            ├── main.tf
            └── terraform.tfvars

You would add variable "ami_id" {} to the modules/ec2/main.tf and solr/prod/us-west-2/main.tf files.

Then you would add a value for ami_id in the solr/prod/us-west-2/terraform.tfvars file.

ami_id = "ami-0ab1c2d3e4f5a6b7c" 

Next you would add the ami_id variable to the solr/prod/us-west-2/main.tf ec2 module declaration:

module "ec2" {
    source            = "../../../modules/ec2"
    # other variables to be passed in go here
    environment       = "${var.environment}"
    region            = "${var.region}"
    account           = "${var.account}"
    business_owner    = "${var.business_owner}"
    application_group = "${var.application_group}"
    ami_id            = "${var.ami_id}" 
}