Summary

This chapter introduced several new concepts that enable you to write more efficient Terraform code. Dynamic blocks are used to write repeatable nested blocks by defining a single block. While Terraform does not have an explicit if-then concept, you can use conditional expressions to effectively write if-then structures. Terraform provides several standard built-in functions to create and transform expressions. Data sources refer to resources that are defined outside your Terraform configurations and come in handy at times. Lastly, we discussed output values, which expose Terraform information. You will use these concepts later in the book to develop modules and implement more complex deployments using Terraform.

In the next chapter we will introduce Terraform modules. Modules allow you to reuse blocks of Terraform code, and hence serve a similar purpose as functions in traditional programming languages.