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Terraform: From Beginner to Master with Examples in AWS

Type constraints - Object

Explore how to define object type constraints in Terraform variables allowing you to create structured and nested configurations. Understand type safety by assigning specific data types to fields and learn how to build complex variable objects for realistic project examples.

We'll cover the following...

Object

An object is a structure that you can define from the other types listed above. They allow you to define quite complex objects and constrain them to types. The easiest way to explain this is to dive straight into an example.

Project example

Consider the following project example:

C++
variable "person" {
    type = object({ name = string, age = number })
    default = {
        name = "Bob"
        age = 10
    }
}
output "person" {
    value = var.person
}
variable "person_with_address" {
    type = object({ name = string, age = number,
            address = object({ line1 = string, line2 = string, 
                        county = string, postcode = string }) })
    default = {
        name = "Jim"
        age = 21
        address = {
            line1 = "1 the road"
            line2 = "St Ives"
            county = "Cambridgeshire"
            postcode = "CB1 2GB"
        }
    }
}
output "person_with_address" {
    value = var.person_with_address
}

In the project above, we first define a variable called person. This variable has two fields:

  • a name which is of type string and

  • an age ...