Before, After, and Error Hooks

Before and After Hooks

Before Hooks or After Hooks are a feature of terragrunt that make it possible to define custom actions that will be called either before or after execution of the terraform command.

Here’s an example:

terraform {
  before_hook "before_hook" {
    commands     = ["apply", "plan"]
    execute      = ["echo", "Running Terraform"]
  }

  after_hook "after_hook" {
    commands     = ["apply", "plan"]
    execute      = ["echo", "Finished running Terraform"]
    run_on_error = true
  }
}

In this example configuration, whenever Terragrunt runs terraform apply or terraform plan, two things will happen:

• Before Terragrunt runs terraform, it will output Running Terraform to the console.
• After Terragrunt runs terraform, it will output Finished running Terraform, regardless of whether or not the command failed.

You can have multiple before and after hooks. Each hook will execute in the order they are defined. For example:

terraform {
  before_hook "before_hook_1" {
    commands     = ["apply", "plan"]
    execute      = ["echo", "Will run Terraform"]
  }

  before_hook "before_hook_2" {
    commands     = ["apply", "plan"]
    execute      = ["echo", "Running Terraform"]
  }
}

This configuration will cause Terragrunt to output Will run Terraform and then Running Terraform before the call to Terraform.

You can learn more about all the various configuration options supported in the reference docs for the terraform block.

Tflint hook

Before Hooks or After Hooks support natively tflint, a linter for Terraform code. It will validate the Terraform code used by Terragrunt, and it’s inputs.

Here’s an example:

terraform {
  before_hook "before_hook" {
    commands     = ["apply", "plan"]
    execute      = ["tflint"]
  }
}

The .tflint.hcl should exist in the same folder as terragrunt.hcl or one of it’s parents. If Terragrunt can’t find a .tflint.hcl file, it won’t execute tflint and return an error. All configurations should be in a config block in this file, as per Tflint’s docs.

plugin "aws" {
    enabled = true
    version = "0.21.0"
    source  = "github.com/terraform-linters/tflint-ruleset-aws"
}

config {
  module = true
}

Configuration

The execute parameter only accepts tflint, it will ignore any other parameter. Any desired extra configuration should be added in the .tflint.hcl file. It will work with a .tflint.hcl file in the current folder or any parent folder.

Authentication for tflint rulesets

Public rulesets

tflint works without any authentication for public rulesets (hosted on public repositories).

Private rulesets

If you want to run a the tflint hook with custom rulesets defined in a private repository, you will need to export locally a valid GITHUB_TOKEN token.

Troubleshooting

flag provided but not defined: -act-as-bundled-plugin error

If you have an .tflint.hcl file that is empty, or uses the terraform ruleset without version or source constraint, it returns the following error:

Failed to initialize plugins; Unrecognized remote plugin message: Incorrect Usage. flag provided but not defined: -act-as-bundled-plugin

To fix this, make sure that the configuration for the terraform ruleset, in the .tflint.hcl file contains a version constraint:

plugin "terraform" {
    enabled = true
    version = "0.2.1"
    source  = "github.com/terraform-linters/tflint-ruleset-terraform"
}

Error Hooks

Error hooks are a special type of after hook that act as exception handlers. They allow you to specify a list of expressions that can be used to catch errors and run custom commands when those errors occur. Error hooks are executed after the before/after hooks.

Here is an example:

terraform {
  error_hook "import_resource" {
    commands  = ["apply"]
    execute   = ["echo", "Error Hook executed"]
    on_errors = [
      ".*",
    ]
  }
}