11 Extending Terraform by Writing Your Own Provider

 

This chapter covers:

  • Developing a custom Terraform provider from scratch
  • Implementing CRUD operations for managed resources
  • Writing acceptance tests for the provider schema and resource files
  • Deploying a serverless API to listen to requests from the provider
  • Building and installing third-party providers

Extending Terraform by writing your own provider is one of the most satisfying things you can do with Terraform. It demonstrates a high-level proficiency with the technology and grants considerable flexibility to tweak Terraform to your needs. Although it’s not as challenging as some people make it out to be, it still a huge investment in time and effort. When might it be worth it to develop your own custom provider?

Two good reasons are:

  1. Wrapping an API for self-service infrastructure provisioning
  2. Exposing utility functions to Terraform

11.1  Blueprints for a Terraform Provider

11.1.1    Terraform Provider Basics

11.1.2    Petstore Provider Architecture

11.2  Writing the Petstore Provider

11.2.1    Setting up the Go Project

11.2.2    Configuring the Provider Schema

11.3  Defining a Pet Resource

11.3.1    Defining Create() – CRUD Lifecycle Management

11.3.2    Defining Read() – CRUD Lifecycle Management

11.3.3    Defining Update() – CRUD Lifecycle Management

11.3.4    Defining Delete() – CRUD Lifecycle Management

11.4  Writing Acceptance Tests

11.4.1    Testing the Provider Schema

11.4.2    Testing the Pet Resource

11.5  Build, Test, Deploy

11.5.1    Deploy the Petstore API

11.5.2    Test and Build the Provider

11.6  Fireside Chat

11.7          Summary