Prerequisites

 An AWS IAM role with S3 permissions

 Access key ID & Secret Access Key of that account.

If you don’t know how to create an access key and secret key, don’t worry. We have the next section for

it.

How to create an Access Key and Secret Key?

1. Login to your AWS Account

2. Select IAM

In Management Console, search for IAM.

3. On the left side of the panel, select User.

4. Select Add Users and enter details.

Please keep in mind to select Programmatic access in Access type to get Access Key ID and Secret Key.

5. Attach policy

After entering the details, attach a policy for S3 as shown below.

Select Next: Tags button displayed below and then Add Tags (optional).

6. Create User.

Review your user policy and then Create User.

After Successful IAM user creation, you will see a message (as shown below) with your Access key and

Secret key.

Note- Store this Access Key and Secret Key to your Local Computer as AWS does not allow you to

retrieve secret keys after its creation.

Now, moving towards how to create an S3 bucket using Terraform.

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Steps to create an S3 bucket using Terraform

In this section, we will first discuss the S3 bucket and then the main Terraform configuration file. We will

also cover the AWS S3 object bucket in terraform.

1. Create S3 bucket module

Create a module that will have a basic S3 file configuration. For that, create one folder named “S3,” we

will have two files: bucket.tf and var.tf.

2. Define bucket

Open bucket.tf and define bucket in that.

bucket.tf

resource "aws_s3_bucket" "demos3" {

bucket = "${var.bucket_name}"
acl = "${var.acl_value}"
}

Explanation

 We have a block with the key name “resource” with resource type “aws_s3_bucket”– which we

want to create. It has a fixed value, and it depends on the provider. Here we have an
 AWS S3 resource where AWS is our provider and S3 is our resource. “Demos3” is the resource

name that the user provides.

 Bucket and ACL are the argument types for our resource. We can have different arguments

according to our needs and their corresponding values.

 Either we can provide value directly or use the var.tf file to declare the value of an argument.

3. Define variables

In var.tf, we will define variables for the bucket.tf

var.tf

variable "bucket_name" {}

variable "acl_value" {
default = "private"
}

Explanation

 As mentioned above, var.tf is used to declare values of variables. We can either provide a

default value to be used when needed or ask for value during execution.

4. Add Configuration

After successfully creating the S3 folder, create a file named main.tf for keeping configuration in our

working directory.

main.tf

provider "aws" {
access_key = "${var.aws_access_key}"
secret_key = "${var.aws_secret_key}"
region = "${var.region}"
}
module "s3" {
source = "<path-to-S3-folder>"
#bucket name should be unique
bucket_name = "<Bucket-name>"
}

Explanation

 It contains the main set of the module’s configurations.

 Here we provide details of our provider (AWS) and access key, secret key, etc.

 Since we are creating S3 using terraform modules, we need to add an S3 module to create an S3

bucket. For this, we will use the keyword “module” and the name of the module (folder) which

we have created earlier.

 In argument, we will provide a source to the S3 module and bucket name, as we haven’t defined

bucket name in var.tf.

 While writing bucket name, please keep in mind that its name is unique in the region, and it

does not contain “_” or Uppercase letters.

5. Add Access key, Secret key, and Region.

Now we will define variable.tf, where we will enter our access key, secret key, and region.

variable.tf

variable "aws_access_key" {
default = “<your_access_key>”
}
variable "aws_secret_key" {
default = “<your_secret_key>”
}
variable "region" {
default = "region"
}

Explanation
  Access key, Secret key, and Region will be defined here.

We are done with creating the S3 bucket; now it’s time to set up Terraform.

Run Terraform script in your system.

If you haven’t downloaded terraform then visit the Terraform official document for downloading

Terraform in your system.

You can check the version of terraform installed in your machine using terraform -v command.

Run the following commands to run Terraform script in your system.

1. terraform init

It is used to initialize the working directory.

It will install the required plugins for our code, e.g., AWS S3.

You will see something like after running terraform init successfully-

2. terraform plan
We will use this command for script verification. It will show if there is an error in our configuration.

The output of terraform plan looks like this if it runs successfully-

3. terraform apply

Use terraform apply to create your S3 bucket.

It will ask you for confirmation before execution; enter yes for confirmation.
Use terraform apply -auto-approve if you want to execute it without asking for confirmation.

After successful execution, it will display the following message-

You can verify your bucket in S3 services in your AWS Account.

Your Bucket will be created in the desired region.

To destroy the S3 bucket, use this command-

terraform destroy

or

terraform destroy -auto-approve // if you don’t want to approve manually

After applying terraform destroy, you will see something like this-

So, this was about how to create an S3 bucket using Terraform.