Nested Objects in Variables

[cfisher440]

I'm creating a projects.auto.tfvars file.
I used the following command to create an empty object
hcledit -f test.tf -u attribute append testing '{}'
This successfully creates
testing = {}
But now I'd like to create the following

testing = {
  testing2 = {}
}

I tried this with the following command but get no output
hcledit -f test.tf -u attribute append testing.testing2 '{}'
Am I possibly just doing something wrong or is this a feature you'd need to implement into the code?

[thelumlaa]

@cfisher440 @minamijoyo did you manage to find a solution?
I am trying to manipulate a tfvars file that contains tags in the following format:
rg_tags = { cost_center = "123" rg_description = "text" app_contact = "12" tech_contact = "23" }

the following query returns rg_tags value:

hcledit attribute get -f .\file.tfvars rg_tags

But this returns an empty string
hcledit attribute get -f .\file.tfvars rg_tags.tech_contact

[cfisher440]

@thelumlaa In my case, since the hcledit tool was not working for me, I ended up going a different route. What I did is I created what I wanted the tfvars file to look like in a json format. I then created a Python script that converts a json file to a tfvars file. Here is the script you can use:

import json

tfvars_json_file = 'projects.auto.tfvars.json'
tfvars_file = 'projects.auto.tfvars'

def format_dict(data, indent=0):
    result = ""
    for key, value in data.items():
        if isinstance(value, dict):
            result += " " * (indent * 2) + "{} = {{\n".format(key)
            result += format_dict(value, indent + 1)
            result += " " * (indent * 2) + "}\n"
        else:
            result += " " * (indent * 2) + "{} = {}\n".format(key, json.dumps(value))
    return result

with open(tfvars_json_file, 'r') as f:
    data = json.load(f)

formatted_data = format_dict(data)

with open(tfvars_file, 'w') as f:
    f.write(formatted_data)