📍 Introduction:

main.tf and variables.tf are files used in Terraform, a popular infrastructure as code (IAC) tool, to define and configure infrastructure resources.

🔹 main.tf

main.tf file: main.tf is the main configuration file used in Terraform. It defines the infrastructure resources to be created, modified or deleted. The main.tf file contains the resource block which describes the attributes of the resource you want to create or modify. The syntax of the resource block is as follows:

resource "<provider>_<resource_type>" "<name>" {
  attribute1 = "value1"
  attribute2 = "value2"
  .
  .
  .
  attributeN = "valueN"
}

Here, provider is the name of the cloud service provider you are using, and resource_type is the type of resource you want to create or modify. For example, if you want to create an EC2 instance on Amazon Web Services (AWS), you would use the following syntax:

⚜ Example:

resource "aws_instance" "example" {
  ami           = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0"
  instance_type = "t2.micro"
}

In the above example, aws_instance is the resource type, and example is the name of the resource block. The ami and instance_type attributes are specific to the EC2 instance resource type, and they define the Amazon Machine Image (AMI) and the instance type, respectively.

🔹 variables.tf

variables.tf file: variables.tf is a file that defines input variables for the main.tf file. Input variables are used to pass information from outside of the main.tf file into the resource blocks in main.tf. Input variables make it easy to reuse a Terraform configuration for multiple environments or scenarios. The syntax for defining a variable in variables.tf is as follows:

variable "<variable_name>" {
  type        = <variable_type>
  default     = <default_value>
  description = "<description>"
}

Here, variable_type is the name of the variable, variable_type is the type of the variable, default_value is the default value for the variable, and description is an optional description of the variable. For example, if you want to define a variable for the region where you want to launch an EC2 instance, you would use the following syntax:

⚜ Example:

variable "region" {
  type        = string
  default     = "us-east-1"
  description = "The AWS region where the EC2 instance should be launched"
}

In the above example, region is the name of the variable, string is the variable type, "us-east-1" is the default value, and "The AWS region where the EC2 instance should be launched" is the description. This variable can then be used in the main.tf file like this:

🔹 Integration of above files:

resource "aws_instance" "example" {
  ami           = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0"
  instance_type = "t2.micro"
  availability_zone = "${var.region}a"
}

In the above example, ${var.region} is used to reference the region variable defined in variables.tf. The availability zone for the EC2 instance is set to the value of the region variable

📍 Conclusion:

In summary, main.tf is the main configuration file used in Terraform that defines the infrastructure resources to be created, modified or deleted. The region block in main.tf describes the attributes of the resource you want to create or modify. On the other hand, variables.tf is a file used to define input variables for the main.tf file. Input variables are used to pass information from outside of the main.tf file into the resource blocks in main.tf, making it easy to reuse a Terraform configuration for multiple environments or scenarios. By properly utilizing these two files, Terraform can efficiently create, manage and provision cloud infrastructure resources in a repeatable, consistent and reliable manner.