Basics

providers

• terraform providers are responsible for understanding API interactions and exposing resources
• they are configured within the terraform block (version) and the provider block (specific provider configuration)

input variables

• variables are used to parameterize terraform configurations
• they can be read from different sources:
  • command line flags
  • environment variables
  • files (e.g. tfvars)

locals

• locals are variables that are only used within the configuration
• they are not exposed to the outside world

outputs

• outputs are used to expose information about the infrastructure
• they can be read from the state file
• they can be used as input for other configurations