Parameters

Templates can contain parameters, which allow prompting the user for additional information when creating workspaces in both the UI and CLI.

data "coder_parameter" "docker_host" {
  name        = "Region"
  description = "Which region would you like to deploy to?"
  icon        = "/emojis/1f30f.png"
  type        = "string"
  default     = "tcp://100.94.74.63:2375"

  option {
    name = "Pittsburgh, USA"
    value = "tcp://100.94.74.63:2375"
    icon = "/emojis/1f1fa-1f1f8.png"
  }

  option {
    name = "Helsinki, Finland"
    value = "tcp://100.117.102.81:2375"
    icon = "/emojis/1f1eb-1f1ee.png"
  }

  option {
    name = "Sydney, Australia"
    value = "tcp://100.127.2.1:2375"
    icon = "/emojis/1f1e6-1f1f9.png"
  }
}

From there, parameters can be referenced during build-time:

provider "docker" {
  host = data.coder_parameter.docker_host.value
}

For a complete list of supported parameter properties, see the coder_parameter Terraform reference

Types

The following parameter types are supported: string, list(string), bool, and number.

List of strings

List of strings is a specific parameter type, that can't be easily mapped to the default value, which is string type. Parameters with the list(string) type must be converted to JSON arrays using jsonencode function.

data "coder_parameter" "security_groups" {
  name        = "Security groups"
  icon        = "/icon/aws.png"
  type        = "list(string)"
  description = "Select appropriate security groups."
  mutable     = true
  default = jsonencode([
    "Web Server Security Group",
    "Database Security Group",
    "Backend Security Group"
  ])
}

Options

A string parameter can provide a set of options to limit the choice:

data "coder_parameter" "docker_host" {
  name        = "Region"
  description = "Which region would you like to deploy to?"
  type        = "string"
  default     = "tcp://100.94.74.63:2375"

  option {
    name = "Pittsburgh, USA"
    value = "tcp://100.94.74.63:2375"
    icon = "/emojis/1f1fa-1f1f8.png"
  }

  option {
    name = "Helsinki, Finland"
    value = "tcp://100.117.102.81:2375"
    icon = "/emojis/1f1eb-1f1ee.png"
  }

  option {
    name = "Sydney, Australia"
    value = "tcp://100.127.2.1:2375"
    icon = "/emojis/1f1e6-1f1f9.png"
  }
}

Incompatibility in Parameter Options for Workspace Builds

When creating Coder templates, authors have the flexibility to modify parameter options associated with rich parameters. Such modifications can involve adding, substituting, or removing a parameter option. It's important to note that making these changes can lead to discrepancies in parameter values utilized by ongoing workspace builds.

Consequently, workspace users will be prompted to select the new value from a pop-up window or by using the command-line interface. While this additional interactive step might seem like an interruption, it serves a crucial purpose. It prevents workspace users from becoming trapped with outdated template versions, ensuring they can smoothly update their workspace without any hindrances.

Example:

• Bob creates a workspace using the python-dev template. This template has a parameter image_tag, and Bob selects 1.12.
• Later, the template author Alice is notified of a critical vulnerability in a package installed in the python-dev template, which affects the image tag 1.12.
• Alice remediates this vulnerability, and pushes an updated template version that replaces option 1.12 with 1.13 for the image_tag parameter. She then notifies all users of that template to update their workspace immediately.
• Bob saves their work, and selects the Update option in the UI. As their workspace uses the now-invalid option 1.12, for the image_tag parameter, they are prompted to select a new value for image_tag.

Required and optional parameters

A parameter is considered to be required if it doesn't have the default property. The user must provide a value to this parameter before creating a workspace.

data "coder_parameter" "account_name" {
  name        = "Account name"
  description = "Cloud account name"
  mutable     = true
}

If a parameter contains the default property, Coder will use this value if the user does not specify any:

data "coder_parameter" "base_image" {
  name        = "Base image"
  description = "Base machine image to download"
  default     = "ubuntu:latest"
}

Admins can also set the default property to an empty value so that the parameter field can remain empty:

data "coder_parameter" "dotfiles_url" {
  name        = "dotfiles URL"
  description = "Git repository with dotfiles"
  mutable     = true
  default     = ""
}

Terraform conditional expressions can be used to determine whether the user specified a value for an optional parameter:

resource "coder_agent" "main" {
  # ...
  startup_script_timeout = 180
  startup_script         = <<-EOT
    set -e

    echo "The optional parameter value is: ${data.coder_parameter.optional.value == "" ? "[empty]" : data.coder_parameter.optional.value}"

  EOT
}

Mutability

Immutable parameters can be only set before workspace creation, or during update on the first usage to set the initial value for required parameters. The idea is to prevent users from modifying fragile or persistent workspace resources like volumes, regions, etc.:

data "coder_parameter" "region" {
  name        = "Region"
  description = "Region where the workspace is hosted"
  mutable     = false
  default     = "us-east-1"
}

It is allowed to modify the mutability state anytime. In case of emergency, template authors can temporarily allow for changing immutable parameters to fix an operational issue, but it is not advised to overuse this opportunity.

Ephemeral parameters

Ephemeral parameters are introduced to users in the form of "build options." This functionality can be used to model specific behaviors within a Coder workspace, such as reverting to a previous image, restoring from a volume snapshot, or building a project without utilizing cache.

As these parameters are ephemeral in nature, subsequent builds will proceed in the standard manner.

data "coder_parameter" "force_rebuild" {
  name         = "force_rebuild"
  type         = "bool"
  description  = "Rebuild the Docker image rather than use the cached one."
  mutable      = true
  default      = false
  ephemeral    = true
}

Validation

Rich parameters support multiple validation modes - min, max, monotonic numbers, and regular expressions.

Number

A number parameter can be limited to boundaries - min, max. Additionally, the monotonicity (increasing or decreasing) between the current parameter value and the new one can be verified too. Monotonicity can be enabled for resources that can't be shrunk without implications, for instance - disk volume size.

data "coder_parameter" "instances" {
  name        = "Instances"
  type        = "number"
  description = "Number of compute instances"
  validation {
    min       = 1
    max       = 8
    monotonic = "increasing"
  }
}

String

A string parameter can have a regular expression defined to make sure that the parameter value matches the pattern. The regex property requires a corresponding error property.

data "coder_parameter" "project_id" {
  name        = "Project ID"
  description = "Alpha-numeric project ID"
  validation {
    regex = "^[a-z0-9]+$"
    error = "Unfortunately, it isn't a valid project ID"
  }
}

Legacy

Legacy parameters are unsupported now

In Coder, workspaces using legacy parameters can't be deployed anymore. To address this, it is necessary to either remove or adjust incompatible templates. In some cases, deleting a workspace with a hard dependency on a legacy parameter may be challenging. To cleanup unsupported workspaces, administrators are advised to take the following actions for affected templates:

1. Enable the feature_use_managed_variables provider flag.
2. Ensure that every legacy variable block has defined missing default values, or convert it to coder_parameter.
3. Push the new template version using UI or CLI.
4. Update unsupported workspaces to the newest template version.
5. Delete the affected workspaces that have been updated to the newest template version.

Migration

⚠️ Migration is available until v0.24.0 (Jun 2023) release.

Terraform variable shouldn't be used for workspace scoped parameters anymore, and it's required to convert variable to coder_parameter resources. To make the migration smoother, there is a special property introduced - legacy_variable and legacy_variable_name , which can link coder_parameter with a legacy variable.

variable "legacy_cpu" {
  sensitive   = false
  description = "CPU cores"
  default     = 2
}

data "coder_parameter" "cpu" {
  name        = "CPU cores"
  type        = "number"
  description = "Number of CPU cores"
  mutable     = true

  legacy_variable_name = "legacy_cpu"
  legacy_variable = var.legacy_cpu
}

Steps

1. Prepare and update a new template version:

   • Add coder_parameter resource matching the legacy variable to migrate.
   • Use legacy_variable_name and legacy_variable to link the coder_parameter to the legacy variable.
   • Mark the new parameter as mutable, so that Coder will not block updating existing workspaces.

2. Update all workspaces to the updated template version. Coder will populate the added coder_parameters with values from legacy variables.

3. Prepare another template version:

   • Remove the migrated variables.
   • Remove properties legacy_variable and legacy_variable_name from coder_parameters.

4. Update all workspaces to the updated template version (2nd).

5. Prepare a third template version:

   • Enable the feature_use_managed_variables provider flag to use managed Terraform variables for template customization. Once the flag is enabled, legacy variables won't be used.

6. Update all workspaces to the updated template version (3rd).

7. Delete legacy parameters.

As a template improvement, the template author can consider making some of the new coder_parameter resources mutable.

Terraform template-wide variables

⚠️ Flag feature_use_managed_variables is available until v0.25.0 (Jul 2023) release. After this release, template-wide Terraform variables will be enabled by default.

As parameters are intended to be used only for workspace customization purposes, Terraform variables can be freely managed by the template author to build templates. Workspace users are not able to modify template variables.

The template author can enable Terraform template-wide variables mode by specifying the following flag:

provider "coder" {
  feature_use_managed_variables = "true"
}

Once it's defined, coder will allow for modifying variables by using CLI and UI forms, but it will not be possible to use legacy parameters.