Why do I get the error "Container.name should not be null or empty"?

Question

We are using terraform to import a ECS solution and for some reason, I can not get pass this error.

aws_ecs_task_definition.clustername: ClientException: Container.name should not be null or empty. 09-Feb-2017 23:35:1 status code: 400

I believe this is coming form this json file, service-prod-server.json

#aws_ecs_task_definition
resource "aws_ecs_task_definition" "cluster-name" {
  family = "cluster-name"
  container_definitions = "${file("task-definitions/service-prod-server.json")}"
}

Here is the top portion of the service-prod-server.json config. I have the name there.

[
  {
    "name": "containername",
    "memory": 7000,
    "image": "imagename",
    "disableNetworking": false,
    "readonlyRootFilesystem": false,

I also have this config defined as well.

#aws_ecs_container_definition
data "aws_ecs_container_definition" "cluster-name" {
  task_definition = "${aws_ecs_task_definition.cluster-name.id}"
  container_name = "containername"
}

Let me know what you guys think

It looks like it works, but what about the directory structure? — minamijoyo
– minamijoyo, Commented Feb 11, 2017 at 7:53
Would you mind sharing the whole service-prod-server.json config (omitting any secret stuff you may have there)? That might help us reproducing the error. — Radek Simko
– Radek Simko, Commented Feb 13, 2017 at 15:39
Looks like it did work, I had to delete the existing environment. Once I did that and did a push, it worked. — Devon
– Devon, Commented Feb 13, 2017 at 17:29

Michael Davidson · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-19 13:55:27Z

10

For me, I labeled the environment variable key incorrectly:

{ "key": "myvariable", "value": "myvalue" }

instead of

{ "name": "myvariable", "value": "myvalue" }

The difference is that I wrote key instead of name and that broke the whole container definition, which gave me this error.

answered Mar 19, 2020 at 13:55

Michael Davidson

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2 Comments

Davos Over a year ago

This doesn't answer the original question which was specifically about Container.name, however I upvote because I had the exact same issue, googling brought me here, and this syntax helped me fix my problem, I was doing something like { "myvariable": "value"} - I hadn't provided the name at all, so thanks!

worldofchris Over a year ago

This answer helped me as I had made the same mistake causing Terraform to ignore my key/value pairs and set environment to {}. Thank You.

mconigliaro · Accepted Answer · 2018-08-13 22:16:53Z

8

For what it's worth, I got this same error in Terraform when trying to pass an entire task definition to container_definitions. Note that the container_definitions option should only be set to the containerDefinitions section of the task definition (not the entire thing).

answered Aug 13, 2018 at 22:16

mconigliaro

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1 Comment

meh Over a year ago

When you put it this way it seems so obvious.

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