What is Cloud Development Kit for Terraform (CDKTF)?

CDKTF allows users to produce Terraform configuration using programming languages such as C#, Python, TypeScript, Java, or Go. Users can use all Terraform providers and modules with CDKTF.

CDKTF uses the Cloud Development Kit from AWS, which provides a set of language-native frameworks for defining infrastructure, and adapters that let underlying provisioning tools use those definitions. 

Prerequisites

 To use CDKTF, you need:

• The Terraform CLI (1.1+).
• Node.js and npm v16+.

To follow this demo, you also need:

• GCP Project

Install CDKTF

Use npm to install CDFTF like below:

npm install --global cdktf-cli@latest

see the installation command output below:

Verify the installation using “cdktf –help” command

Now we are going to create a GCP BigQuery dataset with CDKTF using Python.

Create and initialize the project for CDKTF

Let’s create directory for the project and navigate to the directory.

$ mkdir devops-counsel-cdktf-demo
$ cd devops-counsel-cdktf-demo/

Inside the directory, initialize CDKTF with Python template for Python language and the --local flag prevent CDKTF from using Terraform Cloud.

CDKTF prompts you for a project name and description. I used default values.

$ cdktf init --template=python --local

The above “cdktf init” command creates following files in project directory.

cloudshell:~/devops-counsel-cdktf-demo$ ls
cdktf.json help main.py Pipfile

Now, install Google Cloud provider for CDKTF python package

pip install cdktf-cdktf-provider-google

Python code for creating a BigQuery Dataset.

Replace main.py content with following code to create BigQuery dataset called cdkdemo_dataset

#!/usr/bin/env python
from constructs import Construct
from cdktf import App, TerraformStack, TerraformOutput
from imports.google import (
    GoogleProvider,
    BigqueryDataset
)


class MyStack(TerraformStack):
    def __init__(self, scope: Construct, ns: str):
        super().__init__(scope, ns)

        GoogleProvider(self, id="bigquery-tf", region="us-central1", project="devops-counsel-demo")

        cdkdemoBQDataset = BigqueryDataset(self, "cdkdemo", dataset_id="cdkdemo")
        TerraformOutput(self, "bigquery-dataset-id", value=cdkdemoBQDataset.id)

app = App()
MyStack(app, "devops-counsel-cdktf-demo")

app.synth()

Add google-cloud provider “google@~> 3.3” to terraformProviders list in cdktf.json file like below.

cloudshell:~/devops-counsel-cdktf-demo$ cat cdktf.json
{
  "language": "python",
  "app": "pipenv run python main.py",
  "projectId": "8209d1e4-55b1-4c58-b165-abf13f3583b5",
  "sendCrashReports": "false",
  "terraformProviders": ["google@~> 3.3"],
  "terraformModules": [],
  "codeMakerOutput": "imports",
  "context": {
    "excludeStackIdFromLogicalIds": "true",
    "allowSepCharsInLogicalIds": "true"
  }
}

Now run “cdktf get” to Generate CDK Constructs for GCP Terraform provider and modules, they will be stored under imports directory.

cloudshell:~/devops-counsel-cdktf-demo$ cdktf get
Generated python constructs in the output directory: imports
cloudshell:~/devops-counsel-cdktf-demo$
cloudshell:~/devops-counsel-cdktf-demo$ ls
cdktf.json  help  imports  main.py  Pipfile

Run “cdktf deploy” to deploy the dataset using the Python code in main.py file

$ cdktf apply

you can see terraform state file after apply has been finished successfully.

cloudshell:~/devops-counsel-cdktf-demo$ ls
cdktf.json  cdktf.out  help  imports  main.py  Pipfile  terraform.devops-counsel-cdktf-demo.tfstate

Deleting BigQuery Dataset using destroy

Run “cdftf destroy” to delete the BigQuery dataset that we have created earlier.

$ cdktf destroy

Conclusion

In this demo, I have installed CDKTF cli and initialized CDKTF project and deployed a simple BigQuery dataset using Python language.

I have also covered few CDKTF cli commands.

You can find more information on CDKTF in terraform official documentation.

For more on Terraform:

Terraform: for_each and count meta-arguments