Ben's Terraform Null Label Module

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About The Project

My opinionated label module.

This Terraform module consumes my terraform-null-context and produces consistent names and tags for all of my resources. It implements a strict naming and tagging convention that follows the format from cloudposse/terraform-null-label.

The Cloud Posse label module provides detailed documentation and reasoning however by itself it has too many knobs and provides more options that I use. This module configures the Cloud Posse label exactly how I like it while taking advantage of my context module to carry standard part of the label around.

Terminology

Project vs. Stage Mapping

This module uses the concept of "project" to represent what the underlying cloudposse/terraform-null-label module calls "stage".

Why the difference?

• The CloudPosse module was originally designed with "stage" representing deployment stages (dev, staging, prod)
• In Ben's modules, we use "environment" for that purpose (following namespace-role-region → environment)
• We repurposed the CloudPosse "stage" field to represent "project" or "application" — the specific workload or service being deployed

What this means for you:

• When you pass project = "example" to this module, it maps to stage = "example" in the CloudPosse module
• Outputs like module.label.id will include the project name in the correct position
• The project output exposes module.label.stage internally (see comments in outputs.tf)

This mapping is intentional and consistent across all of Ben's Terraform modules.

Usage

module "context" {
  source    = "bendoerr-terraform-modules/context/null"
  version   = "xxx"
  namespace = "bd"
  role      = "production"
  region    = "us-east-1"
  project   = "example"
}

module "label" {
  source  = "bendoerr-terraform-modules/label/null"
  version = "xxx"
  context = module.context.shared
  name    = "function"
}

resource "aws_lambda_function" "function" {
  function_name = module.label.id   # bd-prd-ue1-example-function
  tags          = module.label.tags # { Name: bd-prd-ue1-example-function,
                                    #   Namespace: bd,
                                    #   Role: production,
                                    #   Region: us-east-1,
                                    #   Project: example,
                                    #   Environment: prod-ue1,
                                    # }
  ...
}

resource "aws_route53_record" "function" {
  name = "${module.label.dns_name}.${vars.zone_name}" # function.ue1.cloud.bendoerr.me
                                                      # assuming vars.zone_name = cloud.bendoerr.me
  ...
}

Cost

Project: bendoerr-terraform-modules/terraform-null-label

 Name  Monthly Qty  Unit  Monthly Cost

 OVERALL TOTAL                   $0.00
──────────────────────────────────
No cloud resources were detected

This module creates no resources and will not generate any cost against any cloud provider you use.

Requirements

Name	Version
terraform	>= 0.13

Version Constraints

This module is designed to be consumed with pessimistic version constraints (~>) to ensure predictable behavior across deployments:

module "label" {
  source  = "bendoerr-terraform-modules/label/null"
  version = "~> 0.3.0"  # Allows 0.3.x, prevents 0.4.0
  # ...
}

Why pessimistic constraints?

• Prevents unexpected breaking changes from major or minor version updates
• Ensures consistent behavior across environments and team members
• Makes upgrade impact predictable and controllable

When a new minor or major version releases, you control when to adopt it. This is intentional - we prefer explicit, tested upgrades over automatic version bumps that might introduce breaking changes.

For more information on Terraform version constraints, see the official documentation.

Modules

Name	Source	Version
label	cloudposse/label/null	0.25.0

Inputs

Name	Description	Type	Default	Required
context	Shared Context from Ben's terraform-null-label	object({ attributes = list(string) dns_namespace = string environment = string instance = string instance_short = string namespace = string region = string region_short = string role = string role_short = string project = string tags = map(string) })	n/a	yes
name	Name of this resource	string	n/a	yes
project	Name of the project or application, this can override the context's project	string	""	no

Outputs

Name	Description
attributes	List of attributes
delimiter	Delimiter between namespace, environment, stage, name and attributes
dns_name	Normalized DNS Name
environment	Normalized environment
id	Disambiguated ID
label_order	The naming order of the id output and Name tag
name	Normalized name
namespace	Normalized namespace
project	Normalized project
tags	Normalized Tag map
tags_as_list_of_maps	Additional tags as a list of maps, which can be used in several AWS resources

Roadmap

See the open issues for a list of proposed features (and known issues).

Contributing

Contributions are what make the open source community such an amazing place to be learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated.

• If you have suggestions for adding or removing projects, feel free to open an issue to discuss it, or directly create a pull request after you edit the README.md file with necessary changes.
• Please make sure you check your spelling and grammar.
• Create individual PR for each suggestion.

Creating A Pull Request

1. Fork the Project
2. Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
3. Commit your Changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
4. Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
5. Open a Pull Request

License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.

Authors

• Benjamin R. Doerr - Terraformer - Benjamin R. Doerr - Built Ben's Terraform Modules

Supported Versions

Only the latest tagged version is supported.

Reporting a Vulnerability

See SECURITY.md.

Acknowledgements

• ShaanCoding (ReadME Generator)
• CloudPossie (Terraform Null Label - Inspiration)
• OpenSSF - Helping me follow best practices
• StepSecurity - Helping me follow best practices
• Infracost - Better than AWS Calculator