Terraform Jsonencode Function – Definition & Examples

The jsonencode function in Terraform is used to encode a given value into a JSON-formatted string. It can be useful for creating IAM users in AWS or Policy in Azure. The opposite of the jsonencode function, the jsondecode function in Terraform allows you to parse a JSON-formatted string and convert it into a data structure that can be used within your Terraform configurations. Examples include using JSON files as input variables and local variables, passing in JSON via environment variables, decoding JSON strings to Terraform maps, using jsonencode in the template file, using jsonencode with the for loop, creating IAM policies using the jsonencode function, and creating Azure Policy definitions with the jsonencode function. The difference between jsonencode and heredoc Terraform is that jsonencode is specifically for encoding structured data into a JSON string, while Heredoc allows you to define a block of text without escaping special characters or worrying about JSON formatting.