Terraform data sources

Data sources let you read existing infrastructure without managing it - useful for referencing resources created outside Terraform or in another state file.

data "aws_vpc" "main" {
  filter {
    name   = "tag:Name"
    values = ["main"]
  }
}

resource "aws_subnet" "app" {
  vpc_id     = data.aws_vpc.main.id
  cidr_block = "10.0.1.0/24"
}

common data sources

# latest Amazon Linux 2 AMI
data "aws_ami" "amazon_linux" {
  most_recent = true
  owners      = ["amazon"]

  filter {
    name   = "name"
    values = ["amzn2-ami-hvm-*-x86_64-gp2"]
  }
}

# current AWS account ID
data "aws_caller_identity" "current" {}

output "account_id" {
  value = data.aws_caller_identity.current.account_id
}

# existing S3 bucket (not managed by this config)
data "aws_s3_bucket" "shared_logs" {
  bucket = "my-shared-logs"
}

reading from another state file

data "terraform_remote_state" "network" {
  backend = "s3"
  config = {
    bucket = "my-tf-state"
    key    = "network/terraform.tfstate"
    region = "us-east-1"
  }
}

resource "aws_instance" "app" {
  subnet_id = data.terraform_remote_state.network.outputs.private_subnet_id
  ami       = data.aws_ami.amazon_linux.id
}