# Assignment

The Nautilus DevOps team needs to set up an SNS topic for sending notifications. They need to create an SNS topic with the following specifications:

1) The topic name should be nautilus-notifications.

Use Terraform to create this SNS topic. The Terraform working directory is /home/bob/terraform. Create the main.tf file (do not create a different .tf file) to accomplish this task.

Note: Right-click under the EXPLORER section in VS Code and select Open in Integrated Terminal to launch the terminal.

# Solution

# SNS Topic — `nautilus-notifications`

Terraform solution to create a standard SNS topic.

## `main.tf`

```hcl
terraform {
  required_providers {
    aws = {
      source  = "hashicorp/aws"
      version = "~> 6.0"
    }
  }
}

provider "aws" {
  region = "us-east-1"
}

resource "aws_sns_topic" "nautilus_notifications" {
  name = "nautilus-notifications"
}
```

## How to run

```bash
cd /home/bob/terraform
terraform init
terraform apply -auto-approve
```

## How it works

### `aws_sns_topic`

One resource is all this task needs. The `name` argument sets the topic name to
`nautilus-notifications` exactly as required.

A few points on what's happening:

- **Standard topic by default.** SNS has two topic classes: **Standard** (high
  throughput, best-effort ordering, at-least-once delivery) and **FIFO** (strict
  ordering, exactly-once, name must end in `.fifo`). Since the name has no `.fifo`
  suffix and `fifo_topic` isn't set, this creates a Standard topic — the right
  choice for general notifications.

- **A topic is just the pub/sub channel.** Creating the topic gives you an endpoint
  that publishers send messages to. Nothing receives those messages until you add
  **subscriptions** (email, SMS, SQS, Lambda, HTTP, etc.). The task only asks for
  the topic itself, so no `aws_sns_topic_subscription` resources are included — those
  would be added later as delivery targets are decided.

- **No access policy specified.** By default SNS attaches a policy allowing the
  topic owner (this account) to publish and manage it. That default is sufficient
  for the task; a custom `policy` would only be needed to grant cross-account or
  service-specific publish rights.

### Sandbox note

Constrained lab environments permit **basic SNS operations** — standard topics like
this one. Nothing advanced (FIFO, complex delivery policies) is in play, so the
create proceeds without restriction.

## Verify

```bash
TOPIC_ARN=$(aws sns list-topics \
  --query "Topics[?ends_with(TopicArn, ':nautilus-notifications')].TopicArn | [0]" \
  --output text)

echo "[$TOPIC_ARN]"

aws sns get-topic-attributes --topic-arn "$TOPIC_ARN" \
  --query 'Attributes.{Name:DisplayName,Arn:TopicArn,Owner:Owner}'
```

Expected — a topic ARN of the form
`arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:<account-id>:nautilus-notifications`.