Original Article: Infrastructure as Code Made Easy: A Beginner’s Guide to Terraform CDK

Summary

This article is a beginner’s guide to Terraform CDK (CDKTF), an alternative to HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL) that allows you to define infrastructure as code (IaC) using your favorite programming language.

I cover the basics of CDKTF, its core components, and how to deploy a small Amazon Web Services (AWS) stack using TypeScript.

• You will review the advantages of using Kubernetes over HCL when building reusable modules and manipulating data.
• Set up your local environment with the prerequisites like Terraform, CDKTF CLI, Node.js, a Terraform Cloud account, and an AWS Free Tier account.
• Learn how to create a new CDKTF project, configure providers (AWS and GitHub), create resources using CDK, modify and delete resources, and use variables and conditions in CDKTF.
• Learn about best practices for CDKTF, including creating a clear and logical structure and incorporating testing and continuous integration.
• Test the’ synth’ process using a testing framework and CDKTF’s assertion library.