base64gzip function reference
This topic provides reference information about the base64gzip
function.
The base64gzip
function compresses an HCL string using gzip and then encodes the string using Base64 encoding.
Introduction
You can use the base64gzip
function to compress an HCL string and then encode it in the Base64 format.
Terraform uses the standard Base64 alphabet that is defined in RFC 4648.
While HashiCorp does not recommend manipulating large, raw binary data in HCL, Base64 encoding can be an effective way to represent small binary objects in memory when you need to pass them as values, rather than referring to files on disk.
For example, you could use the base64gzip
function to compress a large JSON string so that you can upload it to S3.
Because HCL strings are sequences of unicode characters rather than bytes, base64gzip
first encodes the characters in the string as UTF-8.
Then it applies gzip compression and encodes the string using Base64 format.
Syntax
Use the base64gzip
function with the following syntax:
The argument is the string that you want to compress and encode.
In the following example, the function compresses the string at local.my_data
and encodes it using the Base64 format.
Example use case
The following example defines a local value my_data
that contains the string you want to compress and encode.
The base64gzip
function compresses and encodes the string, and then it is used to populate an S3 bucket.
Related functions
base64encode
applies Base64 encoding to an HCL string without using gzip compression.filebase64
reads a file from the local filesystem and encodes its raw bits using the Base64 format.