Setting a Variable Using an Environment Variable

Another way you can set the value of a variable is by using an environment variable. To do this, set an environment variable in your terminal using the convention TF_VAR_<variable_identifier>.

Click the terminal to run the terraform init command:

Environment variables usage in Terraform#

Let’s set environment variables for each variable in the project we used in the last lesson. Follow the instructions below for the given terminal:

📝Note: Please do change <your-bucketname> with your own bucket name.

Once you have set the environment variables, run terraform apply. You will see that now Terraform will not ask you for a value for either variable and will use the values from your environment variables.

📝Note: Once you are done with the project, do not forget to run terraform destroy and then confirm with yes to delete all of the resources in this project.