Get local variable in terraform console

Question

Is there any way to get local variables within Terraform console?

> local.name
unknown values referenced, can't compute value

Seems like Terraform console allows only to check input variables and module output variables.

> var.in
2

> module.abc.out
3

Configuration file examples:

# main.tf

locals {
  name = 1
}

variable "in" {
  value = 2
}

module "abc" {
  source "path/to/module"
}

# path/to/module/main.tf

output "out" {
  value = 3
}

@mithilesh.kunal Edited the question to give more context ‍♂️ — Tensho, Nov 06 '18 at 09:04

Brent Bradburn · Answer 1 · 2023-03-05T22:08:03.463

This should work in recent Terraform releases.

$ terraform version
Terraform v1.0.5

$ terraform console
> local.name
1
> var.in
2

And it can be scripted (non-interactive) using Bash here string, for example.

$ terraform console <<<local.name
1

This is might be really useful for custom tooling, and can even be quite sophisticated.

$ terraform console <<<terraform.workspace
"default"

$ terraform console <<<local.credentials[local.stack].username
"user1234"

The tested 'main.tf'

locals {
  name = 1
  stack = terraform.workspace
  credentials={ 
    default: {username:"user1234",password:"1234",endpoint:"http://localhost"}
  }
}

variable in {
  default = 2
}

Why on Earth doesn't `terraform console` have a feature to list all known data? — Brent Bradburn, Aug 12 '22 at 22:25

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 06 '18 at 15:18

7

Unfortunately, it looks like this is not possible in Terraform v0.11.x, but will be in v0.12 as described in this issue ticket:

https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/issues/18413

HTH!

answered Nov 06 '18 at 15:18

KJH

2,382
16
26

VivekDev · Answer 3 · 2022-08-04T03:03:40.363

There is no REPL on terraform console still as on today(December 2021)

But there is a strongly upvoted request for that, see here on github. If you feel appropriate, you may also go there and upvote.

For me I just wanted to get some items from a list.

For the first item, I could use the element function and do this.

element(["apple", "banana", "pine apple", "grape", "strawberry"], 0)

I get back "apple".

And if want the last item, I have to do the following, using length function

element(["apple", "banana", "pine apple", "grape", "strawberry"], 
length(["apple", "banana", "pine apple", "grape", "strawberry"])-1)

I get back "strawberry".

Since there is code repetition here, I was look for something like this, to define a variable and use it.

var fruits = ["apple", "banana", "pine apple", "grape", "strawberry"]
element(fruits, length(fruits)-1)

This is just not working.

So I ended up defining a variable in a file called main.tf as follows.

variable fruits {
  default = ["apple", "banana", "pine apple", "grape", "strawberry"]
}

Launched terraform console.

Now I can use it as follows.

element(var.fruits, length(var.fruits)-1)

Some of the relevant examples you may want to look at from my Repo

Paolo · Answer 4 · 2023-05-30T11:07:41.587

You might want to check out terraform-repl, an open source terraform console wrapper written in bash. Among other things, it provides tab completion and it also allows you to view all objects of a certain type (e.g. all locals).

Given main.tf:

locals {
  a = "foo"
  b = {"nums": [
    1
  ]}
}

then:

$ terraform-repl
> local
[
  {
    "a": "foo",
    "b": {
      "nums": [
        1
      ]
    }
  }
]
> local.<TAB>
local.a  local.b.nums[0]
> local.b.<TAB>
> local.b.nums[0]

Get local variable in terraform console

4 Answers4