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---
page_title: 'Command: validate'
description: >-
The `terraform validate` command is used to validate the syntax of the
terraform files.
---
# Command: validate
The `terraform validate` command validates the configuration files in a
directory, referring only to the configuration and not accessing any remote
services such as remote state, provider APIs, etc.
Validate runs checks that verify whether a configuration is syntactically
valid and internally consistent, regardless of any provided variables or
existing state. It is thus primarily useful for general verification of
reusable modules, including correctness of attribute names and value types.
It is safe to run this command automatically, for example as a post-save
check in a text editor or as a test step for a re-usable module in a CI
system.
Validation requires an initialized working directory with any referenced plugins and modules installed. To initialize a working directory for validation without accessing any configured backend, use:
```
$ terraform init -backend=false
```
To verify configuration in the context of a particular run (a particular
target workspace, input variable values, etc), use the `terraform plan`
command instead, which includes an implied validation check.
## Usage
Usage: `terraform validate [options]`
This command accepts the following options:
* `-json` - Produce output in a machine-readable JSON format, suitable for
use in text editor integrations and other automated systems. Always disables
color.
* `-no-color` - If specified, output won't contain any color.
## JSON Output Format
When you use the `-json` option, Terraform will produce validation results
in JSON format to allow using the validation result for tool integrations, such
as highlighting errors in a text editor.
As with all JSON output options, it's possible that Terraform will encounter
an error prior to beginning the validation task that will thus not be subject
to the JSON output setting. For that reason, external software consuming
Terraform's output should be prepared to find data on stdout that _isn't_ valid
JSON, which it should then treat as a generic error case.
The output includes a `format_version` key, which as of Terraform 1.1.0 has
value `"1.0"`. The semantics of this version are:
* We will increment the minor version, e.g. `"1.1"`, for backward-compatible
changes or additions. Ignore any object properties with unrecognized names to
remain forward-compatible with future minor versions.
* We will increment the major version, e.g. `"2.0"`, for changes that are not
backward-compatible. Reject any input which reports an unsupported major
version.
We will introduce new major versions only within the bounds of
[the Terraform 1.0 Compatibility Promises](/language/v1-compatibility-promises).
In the normal case, Terraform will print a JSON object to the standard output
stream. The top-level JSON object will have the following properties:
- `valid` (boolean): Summarizes the overall validation result, by indicating
`true` if Terraform considers the current configuration to be valid or
`false` if it detected any errors.
- `error_count` (number): A zero or positive whole number giving the count
of errors Terraform detected. If `valid` is `true` then `error_count` will
always be zero, because it is the presence of errors that indicates that
a configuration is invalid.
- `warning_count` (number): A zero or positive whole number giving the count
of warnings Terraform detected. Warnings do not cause Terraform to consider
a configuration to be invalid, but they do indicate potential caveats that
a user should consider and possibly resolve.
- `diagnostics` (array of objects): A JSON array of nested objects that each
describe an error or warning from Terraform.
The nested objects in `diagnostics` have the following properties:
- `severity` (string): A string keyword, either `"error"` or
`"warning"`, indicating the diagnostic severity.
The presence of errors causes Terraform to consider a configuration to be
invalid, while warnings are just advice or caveats to the user which do not
block working with the configuration. Later versions of Terraform may
introduce new severity keywords, so consumers should be prepared to accept
and ignore severity values they don't understand.
- `summary` (string): A short description of the nature of the problem that
the diagnostic is reporting.
In Terraform's usual human-oriented diagnostic messages, the summary serves
as a sort of "heading" for the diagnostic, printed after the "Error:" or
"Warning:" indicator.
Summaries are typically short, single sentences, but can sometimes be longer
as a result of returning errors from subsystems that are not designed to
return full diagnostics, where the entire error message therefore becomes the
summary. In those cases, the summary might include newline characters which
a renderer should honor when presenting the message visually to a user.
- `detail` (string): An optional additional message giving more detail about
the problem.
In Terraform's usual human-oriented diagnostic messages, the detail provides
the paragraphs of text that appear after the heading and the source location
reference.
Detail messages are often multiple paragraphs and possibly interspersed with
non-paragraph lines, so tools which aim to present detail messages to the
user should distinguish between lines without leading spaces, treating them
as paragraphs, and lines with leading spaces, treating them as preformatted
text. Renderers should then soft-wrap the paragraphs to fit the width of the
rendering container, but leave the preformatted lines unwrapped.
Some Terraform detail messages contain an approximation of bullet
lists using ASCII characters to mark the bullets. This is not a
contractural formatting convention, so renderers should avoid depending on
it and should instead treat those lines as either paragraphs or preformatted
text. Future versions of this format may define additional rules for other text conventions, but will maintain backward compatibility.
- `range` (object): An optional object referencing a portion of the configuration
source code that the diagnostic message relates to. For errors, this will
typically indicate the bounds of the specific block header, attribute, or
expression which was detected as invalid.
A source range is an object with a property `filename` which gives the
filename as a relative path from the current working directory, and then
two properties `start` and `end` which are both themselves objects
describing source positions, as described below.
Not all diagnostic messages are connected with specific portions of the
configuration, so `range` will be omitted or `null` for diagnostic messages
where it isn't relevant.
- `snippet` (object): An optional object including an excerpt of the
configuration source code that the diagnostic message relates to.
The snippet information includes:
- `context` (string): An optional summary of the root context of the
diagnostic. For example, this might be the resource block containing the
expression which triggered the diagnostic. For some diagnostics this
information is not available, and then this property will be `null`.
- `code` (string): A snippet of Terraform configuration including the
source of the diagnostic. This can be multiple lines and may include
additional configuration source code around the expression which
triggered the diagnostic.
- `start_line` (number): A one-based line count representing the position
in the source file at which the `code` excerpt begins. This is not
necessarily the same value as `range.start.line`, as it is possible for
`code` to include one or more lines of context before the source of the
diagnostic.
- `highlight_start_offset` (number): A zero-based character offset into the
`code` string, pointing at the start of the expression which triggered
the diagnostic.
- `highlight_end_offset` (number): A zero-based character offset into the
`code` string, pointing at the end of the expression which triggered the
diagnostic.
- `values` (array of objects): Contains zero or more expression values
which may be useful in understanding the source of a diagnostic in a
complex expression. These expression value objects are described below.
### Source Position
A source position object, as used in the `range` property of a diagnostic
object, has the following properties:
- `byte` (number): A zero-based byte offset into the indicated file.
- `line` (number): A one-based line count for the line containing the relevant
position in the indicated file.
- `column` (number): A one-based count of _Unicode characters_ from the start
of the line indicated in `line`.
A `start` position is inclusive while an `end` position is exclusive. The
exact positions used for particular error messages are intended for human
interpretation only.
### Expression Value
An expression value object gives additional information about a value which is
part of the expression which triggered the diagnostic. This is especially
useful when using `for_each` or similar constructs, in order to identify
exactly which values are responsible for an error. The object has two properties:
- `traversal` (string): An HCL-like traversal string, such as
`var.instance_count`. Complex index key values may be elided, so this will
not always be valid, parseable HCL. The contents of this string are intended
to be human-readable.
- `statement` (string): A short English-language fragment describing the value
of the expression when the diagnostic was triggered. The contents of this
string are intended to be human-readable and are subject to change in future
versions of Terraform.