HashiCorp Configuration Language — the syntax Terraform, Packer, and Vault use for configuration. HCL2 supports expressions and type definitions.

Does it execute expressions?

No — the tool is a syntactic converter. `${var.name}` is preserved as a string literal. To resolve expressions, Terraform plan/validate is the right path.

What about heredoc strings?

Preserved as multi-line JSON strings. The HCL form `<<EOF ... EOF` becomes a `\n`-separated string in JSON.

Yes — JSON is a valid Terraform input format. The generated HCL style is clean but may differ in whitespace from hand-written HCL.

HCL (Terraform) ↔ JSON

DevTools Surf

Example: HCL (Terraform) ↔ JSON

A worked example, rendered from real sample data. Sign in to run the tool on your own input.

Input

resource "aws_instance" "web" {
  ami = "ami-12345"
  instance_type = "t2.micro"
  tags = {
    Name = "web-server"
  }
}

Output

{
  "resource": {
    "aws_instance": {
      "web": {
        "ami": "ami-12345",
        "instance_type": "t2.micro",
        "tags": {
          "Name": "web-server"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

About HCL (Terraform) ↔ JSON

HCL (Terraform) ↔ JSON preview - Converters tool

Convert between HCL/Terraform config and JSON. Part of the DevTools Surf developer suite. Browse more tools in the Converters collection.

Use Cases

DevOps engineers generating Terraform configs programmatically
Platform teams validating infrastructure-as-code changes in CI
Cloud architects comparing Terraform modules across environments
Automation scripts that need to read and modify Terraform state

Tips

Validate Terraform blocks as JSON for programmatic editing
Use JSON output to compare Terraform configs across envs
Convert JSON back to HCL for human-readable pull requests

Fun Facts

HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language) was created by Mitchell Hashimoto in 2014 specifically for HashiCorp tools — it combines the readability of YAML with the precision of JSON.
Terraform supports both HCL (.tf) and JSON (.tf.json) natively, making bidirectional conversion a built-in design feature of the language.
HCL2, released with Terraform 0.12 in 2019, added first-class expressions and for-each loops, making it a near-programming language rather than just a config format.

FAQ

What is HCL?: HashiCorp Configuration Language — the syntax Terraform, Packer, and Vault use for configuration. HCL2 supports expressions and type definitions.
Does it execute expressions?: No — the tool is a syntactic converter. `${var.name}` is preserved as a string literal. To resolve expressions, Terraform plan/validate is the right path.
What about heredoc strings?: Preserved as multi-line JSON strings. The HCL form `<<EOF ... EOF` becomes a `\n`-separated string in JSON.
Can I convert back?: Yes — JSON is a valid Terraform input format. The generated HCL style is clean but may differ in whitespace from hand-written HCL.

Related Converters Tools

JSON to XML JSON to CSV JSON to YAML JSON to TSV JSON to String XML to JSON XML to CSV XML to String