Error handling

Just about every method foo in Terratest comes in two versions: foo and fooE (e.g., terraform.Apply and terraform.ApplyE).

• foo: The base method takes a t *testing.T as an argument. If the method hits any errors, it calls t.Fatal to fail the test.

• fooE: Methods that end with the capital letter E always return an error as the last argument and never call t.Fatal themselves. This allows you to decide how to handle errors.

You will use the base method name most of the time, as it allows you to keep your code more concise by avoiding if err != nil checks all over the place:

terraform.Init(t, terraformOptions)
terraform.Apply(t, terraformOptions)
url := terraform.Output(t, terraformOptions, "url")

In the code above, if Init, Apply, or Output hits an error, the method will call t.Fatal and fail the test immediately, which is typically the behavior you want. However, if you are expecting an error and don’t want it to cause a test failure, use the method name that ends with a capital E:

if _, err := terraform.InitE(t, terraformOptions); err != nil {
  // Do something with err
}

if _, err := terraform.ApplyE(t, terraformOptions); err != nil {
  // Do something with err
}

url, err := terraform.OutputE(t, terraformOptions, "url")
if err != nil {
  // Do something with err
}

As you can see, the code above is more verbose, but gives you more flexibility with how to handle errors.