GitHub Composite Action for Terraform Validation and Formatting

        

Validate and format Terraform configuration in your CI pipeline using this GitHub Composite Action. This action ensures that your Terraform code is properly initialized, formatted, and structurally valid. It supports CI-friendly state keying, custom release tag checkouts, and soft failure for flexibility in development workflows.

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📘 Description

This composite GitHub Action performs the following tasks for Terraform code quality:

• Checks out the repository at a specific release tag or current branch
• Initializes Terraform with an S3 backend
• Checks code formatting (terraform fmt)
• Validates configuration syntax (terraform validate)
• Supports soft-fail behavior to continue even on validation errors
• Outputs a valid result for use in conditional downstream steps

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🔧 Inputs

Name	Description	Required	Default
terraform-dir	Relative path to the directory containing Terraform configuration files	No	tf
release-tag	Git release tag to check out. If omitted, the current branch is used	No	''
ci-pipeline	Set to 'true' to use commit SHA in the backend key (CI/CD use case)	No	false
s3-bucket	Name of the S3 bucket for storing the Terraform state file	Yes	—
s3-region	AWS region where the S3 backend bucket is located (e.g., us-east-1)	Yes	—
soft-fail	Set to 'true' to continue the workflow even if formatting or validation fails	No	true

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📤 Outputs

Name	Description
valid	true if validation passed, false if it failed

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✅ Behavior

• Performs a terraform init using a dynamic or static S3 backend key
• Fails the job if Terraform code is not properly formatted or is invalid
• Prints results to both console output and the GitHub Actions Summary
• Supports soft-fail for non-blocking failures during development workflows
• Outputs a valid result for downstream conditional steps

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🚀 Usage

jobs:
  tf-validate:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Run Terraform Validate Action
        uses: subhamay-bhattacharyya-gha/tf-validate-action@main
        with:
          terraform-dir: tf
          s3-bucket: your-terraform-backend-bucket
          s3-region: us-east-1
          ci-pipeline: "true"
          soft-fail: "false"

      - name: Display Status
        run: |
          echo "Validation Passed: ${{ steps.tf-validate.outputs.valid }}"

License

MIT