How-to Retrive JSON Formatted Execution Plan with Only Resource Changes

Introduction

When you retrieve a JSON-formatted execution plan from the HCP Terraform API, the output contains the complete details of the plan run. This tutorial guides you on how to use the HCP Terraform API and the jq command-line utility to retrieve only the resource_changes object from the plan.

Expected Outcome

After completing this tutorial, you will be able to isolate and display only the resource changes from a JSON-formatted execution plan.

Procedure

1. Retrieve the plan ID from a specific run.

   You can find the plan-id by querying the run's details and filtering the JSON response for the plan relationship data.

   $ curl \
     --silent \
     --header "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
     --header "Content-Type: application/vnd.api+json" \
     --location \
     https://app.terraform.io/api/v2/runs/run-hWpJYg54Rc57V4cw | \
     jq '.data.relationships.plan.data.id'

   The command returns the plan ID.

   "plan-o8NeGBUGRm7Rj3sg"

2. Retrieve the JSON execution plan and filter for resource changes.

   Use the plan ID from the previous step to fetch the JSON output for that plan and pipe the result to jq to extract the .resource_changes object.

   $ curl \
     --silent \
     --header "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
     --header "Content-Type: application/vnd.api+json" \
     --location \
     https://app.terraform.io/api/v2/plans/plan-o8NeGBUGRm7Rj3sg/json-output | \
     jq '.resource_changes'

   The command returns only the resource_changes array from the plan.

   

Additional Information

• Runs API - Get Run Details
• Plans API - Retrieve the JSON execution plan
• HCP Terraform API Tokens