Terraform HCL Formatter

HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language) is the declarative language used by Terraform to define infrastructure. Consistent formatting makes diffs smaller in code review, reduces merge conflicts, and makes large configs easier to navigate. The official terraform fmt command enforces a canonical style, and this tool applies the same rules in your browser.

terraform fmt reformats HCL files to canonical style: 2-space indentation, aligned = signs within blocks, normalized blank lines, and consistent brace placement. It does not change logic — only whitespace and alignment. You should run it as a pre-commit hook or in CI to keep your codebase consistent.

Alphabetical sorting is optional and depends on team preference. It makes it easier to find attributes in large blocks and reduces the chance of duplicate keys, but it can make logically-related attributes (like ingress/egress rules) feel disconnected. This formatter lets you toggle it on or off.

This formatter recognises terraform, provider, resource, data, variable, output, locals, module, and moved blocks. Each block is parsed individually so indentation and alignment are correctly scoped to their own block level.

It scans your HCL for every var.xxx reference and generates a variables.tf skeleton with an empty variable block for each unique variable name. This is handy when you've written a module and need to declare all its input variables quickly.

Terraform 0.12 introduced first-class expressions. Common 0.11 patterns that still work but are discouraged include: string-wrapping references like "${var.name}" (should be just var.name), and list() / map() constructor functions that were replaced by literal syntax. This tool flags them so you can modernise your configs.