github Archives - Chai Study

Git is one of the official providers supported by Terraform. We can manage GitHub through Terraform, like repository creation, GitHub Actions, etc.

The official terraform git document can be here

In our below example, we will try to create a basic private repository in our GitHub account.

Authentication Method

Terraform supports two types of Authentication for Github.

OAuth /Personal Access Token
GitHub App Installation

OAuth /Personal Access Token

This is the easiest method for authenticating Git using Terraform. We will need to create a token in our GitHub account and pass the Token value to our Terraform provider block.

Steps to Generate OAuth /Personal Access Token

Log in to your GitHub account at, https://github.com
Click on the Left Top side profile icon and on the navigation bar, click on setting

Now, on the right-hand side profile navigation panel, click on the Developer settings

terraform git repository developer setting

On the Developers setting Page, select Personal access tokens, then select Tokens (classic)
You can select Fine-grained Tokens, but during this document creation it was a beta version, so we will go with classic tokens.
Click on Generate new token and select Classic Tokens.

terraform GitHub repository classic token

On the New personal access token (classic) generate the page, and update the following.
- Note – Your Token usage description.
- Expiration – Set the date to a minimum, for security purposes.
- Select Scopes – select the permission/role you want to grant to your token, do not select all roles. select only the minimum roles which are required.

Once you update the above details, click on Generate token
Copy the generated token, as we will need this token in our terraform code

Note: The token shown in the above example has been deleted and no longer exist

Terraform Code

Define the provider block using GitHub as the provider, in our example, we have defined in provider.tf file.

terraform {
  required_providers {
    github = {
      source  = "integrations/github"
      version = "~> 5.0"
    }
  }
}

provider "github" {
  token = var.token
}

Now define your variables in variable.tf file.

variable "token" {
  description = "Enter your git token"
  default     = "ghp_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxrfR1c"
}

Let us define the GitHub repositroy resource block in main.tf file. The output for our configuration will be the HTTP clone URL of our newly created repository

resource "github_repository" "my-terraform-repo" {
  name        = "my-terraform-repo"
  description = "Git repository created using Terraform"
  visibility  = "private"
}

# get the http clone url 
output "get_clone_url" {
  value = github_repository.my-terraform-repo.http_clone_url
}

We have completed the configuration, now let us init our terraform to download the git modules and plugins.

terraform init

The GitHub plugins/modules are downloaded, and now we will run the plan for an overview of our GitHub repository.

terraform plan -out gitrepo.tfplan

To create the GitHub repository, we will run the apply command with the above plan file.

terraform apply gitrepo.tfplan

The terraform has created our repository successfully, we can cross-verify them by validating them in our GitHub.

Tag: github

Terraform – GitHub Repository Creation