Using keep-sorted to organize Terraform objects
Use keep-sorted to organize your Terraform objects in sorted order within your code
Alphabetically sorting variables, sets, arrays, and other strings has long been considered a good practice, not just in Terraform/OpenTofu code.
I want to explore how to sort Terraform/OpenTofu resources, outputs, lists, and more.
I’ll explain how to use keep-sorted from Google to maintain well-organized, properly sorted Terraform/OpenTofu code.
Rather than diving into a lengthy description of keep-sorted features, let’s explore some examples.
Install keep-sorted:
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TMP_DIR="${TMP_DIR:-${PWD}}"
mkdir -pv "${TMP_DIR}"
wget -q "https://github.com/google/keep-sorted/releases/download/v0.6.1/keep-sorted_$(uname | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')" -O "${TMP_DIR}/keep-sorted"
chmod +x "${TMP_DIR}/keep-sorted"
Let’s have some example data.tf file:
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tee "${TMP_DIR}/data.tf" << EOF
# keep-sorted start block=yes newline_separated=yes
# [APIGateway-007] REST API Gateway 7
data "wiz_cloud_configuration_rules" "apigateway-007" {
search = "APIGateway-007"
}
# [APIGateway-001] REST API Gateway 1
data "wiz_cloud_configuration_rules" "apigateway-001" {
search = "APIGateway-001"
}
# [APIGateway-009] REST API Gateway 9
data "wiz_cloud_configuration_rules" "apigateway-009" {
search = "APIGateway-009"
}
# [APIGateway-002] REST API Gateway 2
data "wiz_cloud_configuration_rules" "apigateway-002" {
search = "APIGateway-002"
}
# keep-sorted end
EOF
Let’s check the output after using keep-sorted:
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"${TMP_DIR}/keep-sorted" "${TMP_DIR}/data.tf" && cat "${TMP_DIR}/data.tf"
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# keep-sorted start block=yes newline_separated=yes
# [APIGateway-001] REST API Gateway 1
data "wiz_cloud_configuration_rules" "apigateway-001" {
search = "APIGateway-001"
}
# [APIGateway-002] REST API Gateway 2
data "wiz_cloud_configuration_rules" "apigateway-002" {
search = "APIGateway-002"
}
# [APIGateway-007] REST API Gateway 7
data "wiz_cloud_configuration_rules" "apigateway-007" {
search = "APIGateway-007"
}
# [APIGateway-009] REST API Gateway 9
data "wiz_cloud_configuration_rules" "apigateway-009" {
search = "APIGateway-009"
}
# keep-sorted end
Diff:
keep-sorted data.tf diff
As you can see above:
- The data resources were sorted
- The comments were preserved with the data sources
One more example - main.tf:
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tee "${TMP_DIR}/main.tf" << EOF
locals {
# keep-sorted start block=yes numeric=yes
wiz_cloud_configuration_rules_20 = [
# keep-sorted start
data.wiz_cloud_configuration_rules.apigateway-02.id,
data.wiz_cloud_configuration_rules.apigateway-01.id,
data.wiz_cloud_configuration_rules.apigateway-09.id,
data.wiz_cloud_configuration_rules.apigateway-07.id,
# keep-sorted end
]
wiz_cloud_configuration_rules_5 = [
# keep-sorted start
data.wiz_cloud_configuration_rules.apigateway-10.id,
data.wiz_cloud_configuration_rules.apigateway-2.id,
data.wiz_cloud_configuration_rules.apigateway-27.id,
data.wiz_cloud_configuration_rules.apigateway-1.id,
# keep-sorted end
]
# keep-sorted end
}
EOF
…and the output is:
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"${TMP_DIR}/keep-sorted" "${TMP_DIR}/main.tf" && cat "${TMP_DIR}/main.tf"
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locals {
# keep-sorted start block=yes numeric=yes
wiz_cloud_configuration_rules_5 = [
# keep-sorted start
data.wiz_cloud_configuration_rules.apigateway-1.id,
data.wiz_cloud_configuration_rules.apigateway-10.id,
data.wiz_cloud_configuration_rules.apigateway-2.id,
data.wiz_cloud_configuration_rules.apigateway-27.id,
# keep-sorted end
]
wiz_cloud_configuration_rules_20 = [
# keep-sorted start
data.wiz_cloud_configuration_rules.apigateway-01.id,
data.wiz_cloud_configuration_rules.apigateway-02.id,
data.wiz_cloud_configuration_rules.apigateway-07.id,
data.wiz_cloud_configuration_rules.apigateway-09.id,
# keep-sorted end
]
# keep-sorted end
}
Diff:
keep-sorted main.tf diff
keep-sorted has few more features documented in the README.md and as I mentioned before - it’s not only for Terraform / OpenTofu.
Cleanup
Delete all created files:
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rm -v "${TMP_DIR}"/{data,main}.tf "${TMP_DIR}/keep-sorted"
Enjoy … 😉