Strings and Templates

String literals are the most complex kind of literal expression in Terraform, and also the most commonly used.

Terraform supports both a quoted syntax and a "heredoc" syntax for strings. Both of these syntaxes support template sequences for interpolating values and manipulating text.

Quoted Strings

A quoted string is a series of characters delimited by straight double-quote characters (").

"hello"

Escape Sequences

In quoted strings, the backslash character serves as an escape sequence, with the following characters selecting the escape behavior:

There are also two special escape sequences that do not use backslashes:

Heredoc Strings

Terraform also supports a "heredoc" style of string literal inspired by Unix shell languages, which allows multi-line strings to be expressed more clearly.

<<EOT
hello
world
EOT

A heredoc string consists of:

• An opening sequence consisting of:
  • A heredoc marker (<< or <<- — two less-than signs, with an optional hyphen for indented heredocs)
  • A delimiter word of your own choosing
  • A line break
• The contents of the string, which can span any number of lines
• The delimiter word you chose, alone on its own line (with indentation allowed for indented heredocs)

The << marker followed by any identifier at the end of a line introduces the sequence. Terraform then processes the following lines until it finds one that consists entirely of the identifier given in the introducer.

In the above example, EOT is the identifier selected. Any identifier is allowed, but conventionally this identifier is in all-uppercase and begins with EO, meaning "end of". EOT in this case stands for "end of text".

Generating JSON or YAML

Don't use "heredoc" strings to generate JSON or YAML. Instead, use the jsonencode function or the yamlencode function so that Terraform can be responsible for guaranteeing valid JSON or YAML syntax.

  example = jsonencode({
    a = 1
    b = "hello"
  })

Indented Heredocs

The standard heredoc form (shown above) treats all space characters as literal spaces. If you don't want each line to begin with spaces, then each line must be flush with the left margin, which can be awkward for expressions in an indented block:

block {
  value = <<EOT
hello
world
EOT
}

To improve on this, Terraform also accepts an indented heredoc string variant that is introduced by the <<- sequence:

block {
  value = <<-EOT
  hello
    world
  EOT
}

In this case, Terraform analyses the lines in the sequence to find the one with the smallest number of leading spaces, and then trims that many spaces from the beginning of all of the lines, leading to the following result:

hello
  world

Escape Sequences

Backslash sequences are not interpreted as escapes in a heredoc string expression. Instead, the backslash character is interpreted literally.

Heredocs support two special escape sequences that do not use backslashes:

String Templates

Within quoted and heredoc string expressions, the sequences ${ and %{ begin template sequences. Templates let you directly embed expressions into a string literal, to dynamically construct strings from other values.

Interpolation

A ${ ... } sequence is an interpolation, which evaluates the expression given between the markers, converts the result to a string if necessary, and then inserts it into the final string:

"Hello, ${var.name}!"

In the above example, the named object var.name is accessed and its value inserted into the string, producing a result like "Hello, Juan!".

Directives

A %{ ... } sequence is a directive, which allows for conditional results and iteration over collections, similar to conditional and for expressions.

The following directives are supported:

• The %{if <BOOL>}/%{else}/%{endif} directive chooses between two templates based on the value of a bool expression:

  "Hello, %{ if var.name != "" }${var.name}%{ else }unnamed%{ endif }!"
  

  The else portion may be omitted, in which case the result is an empty string if the condition expression returns false.

• The %{for <NAME> in <COLLECTION>} / %{endfor} directive iterates over the elements of a given collection or structural value and evaluates a given template once for each element, concatenating the results together:

  <<EOT
  %{ for ip in aws_instance.example[*].private_ip }
  server ${ip}
  %{ endfor }
  EOT
  

  The name given immediately after the for keyword is used as a temporary variable name which can then be referenced from the nested template.

Whitespace Stripping

To allow template directives to be formatted for readability without adding unwanted spaces and newlines to the result, all template sequences can include optional strip markers (~), immediately after the opening characters or immediately before the end. When a strip marker is present, the template sequence consumes all of the literal whitespace (spaces and newlines) either before the sequence (if the marker appears at the beginning) or after (if the marker appears at the end):

<<EOT
%{ for ip in aws_instance.example[*].private_ip ~}
server ${ip}
%{ endfor ~}
EOT

In the above example, the newline after each of the directives is not included in the output, but the newline after the server ${ip} sequence is retained, causing only one line to be generated for each element:

server 10.1.16.154
server 10.1.16.1
server 10.1.16.34

When using template directives, we recommend always using the "heredoc" string literal form and then formatting the template over multiple lines for readability. Quoted string literals should usually include only interpolation sequences.