Terraform - A reference to resource type must be followed by at least one attribute access, specifying the resource name

Question

I am trying to use terraform string function and string concatenation on a terraform tfvars variable. but when run the terraform plan it through the below exception

Error: A reference to a resource type must be followed by at least one attribute access, specifying the resource name.

Following is the terraform code

locals {
  name_suffix = "${var.namespace != "" ? var.namespace : var.env}"
}

resource "azurerm_container_registry" "my_acr" {
  name                = "myacr${replace(name_suffix, "-", "")}"
  location            = "${azurerm_resource_group.location}"
  resource_group_name = "${azurerm_resource_group.name}"
  sku                 = "Basic"
  admin_enabled       = true
} 

Here namespace value will be resolved at runtime.

Terraform version 0.12.7

Answer 1

it was a silly mistake. instead of name_suffix, I should have written it like local.name_suffix inside the acr resource

Answer 2

Had a similar issue when setting up Terraform configuration files for AWS Fargate.

Got the error below:

│ Error: Invalid reference
│ 
│   on ../ecs/main.tf line 72, in resource "aws_ecs_service" "aes":
│   72:     type  = order_placement_type
│ 
│ A reference to a resource type must be followed by at least one attribute access, specifying the resource name.
╵
╷
│ Error: Invalid reference
│ 
│   on ../ecs/main.tf line 73, in resource "aws_ecs_service" "aes":
│   73:     field = order_placement_field
│ 
│ A reference to a resource type must be followed by at least one attribute access, specifying the resource name.

The issue was that I missed the var prefix for variables, so instead of this:

ordered_placement_strategy {
    type  = order_placement_type
    field = order_placement_field
}

I corrected it to this:

ordered_placement_strategy {
  type  = var.order_placement_type
  field = var.order_placement_field
}

That's all.