provider::terraform::encode_tfvars Function

Note: This function is supported only in Terraform v1.8 and later.

provider::terraform::encode_tfvars is a rarely-needed function which takes an object value and produces a string containing a description of that object using the same syntax as Terraform CLI would expect in a .tfvars file.

In most cases it's better to pass data between Terraform configurations using Data Sources, instead of writing generated .tfvars files to disk. Use this function only as a last resort.

To use this function, your module must declare a dependency on the built-in terraform provider, which contains this function:

terraform {
  required_providers {
    terraform = {
      source = "terraform.io/builtin/terraform"
    }
  }
}

Elsewhere in your module you can then call this function:

provider::terraform::encode_tfvars({
  example = "Hello!"
})

The call above would produce the following result:

example = "Hello!"

Due to Terraform's requirements for the .tfvars format, all of the attributes of the given object must be valid Terraform variable names, as would be accepted in an input variable declaration.

The .tfvars format is specific to Terraform and so we do not recommend using it as a general serialization format. Use jsonencode or yamlencode instead to produce formats that are supported by other software.

Warning: The exact syntax used to encode certain values may change in future versions of Terraform to follow idiomatic style. Avoid using the results of this function in any context where such changes might be disruptive when upgrading Terraform in future.

decode_tfvars performs the opposite operation: parsing .tfvars content to obtain the variable values declared inside.
encode_expr encodes a single value as a plain expression, without the .tfvars container around it.

provider::terraform::encode_tfvars Function

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