Command: show

The tofu show command can inspect various OpenTofu artifacts and produce either human-readable or machine-readable descriptions.

For example, you can use tofu show to inspect a saved plan file to check that the planned operations are acceptable, or to inspect the latest state snapshot.

Usage​

Usage: tofu show [target-selection-option] [other-options]

Use one of the following target selection options to specify the artifact to inspect:

• -state: Inspect the latest state snapshot, if any.
• -plan=FILENAME: Inspect the plan stored in the given saved plan file.
• -config: Inspect the current full configuration (requires -json).
• -module=DIR: Inspect the configuration of just a single module in the given directory, without requiring any dependencies to be installed (requires -json).

The -state option is the default if none of these options are used. The target-selection options are mutually-exclusive.

This command also accepts the following additional options:

• -no-color: Disables the use of terminal escape sequences in human-oriented output.
• -json: Selects the machine-readable JSON output format, instead of the default human-oriented output.
• -var and -var-file: Specifies values for any input variables used in module source addresses or backend settings in the current configuration.

Unless using the -module=DIR option, this command relies on schema information from provider plugins to fully understand the provider-specific data structures in state, plan, and configuration artifacts. If you are currently using different provider versions than were used when creating the selected artifact then you may need to use tofu apply (or similar) to allow OpenTofu to upgrade the stored data to match the latest provider schemas.

JSON Output​

When using the -json option, the structure of the machine-readable output depends on the selected artifact type:

• -state returns the JSON state representation.

• -plan=FILENAME returns the the JSON plan representation, which also includes information about the configuration and prior state that the plan was based on.

• -config returns the JSON configuration representation, providing exactly the same configuration-related information that the plan representation would include, but without requiring a plan to be created first.

• -module=DIR returns a subset of the JSON configuration representation, where:

  • The "module" property of each module call is omitted.
  • The "schema_version" property of each resource is omitted.
  • All expression-related properties are omitted.

  These omissions together allow this particular mode to work without first executing tofu init, and thus without first installing the module's dependencies.

Legacy Usage​

For backward compatibility with older versions of OpenTofu, this command also supports a different usage pattern:

tofu show [other-options] <filename>

In this style, none of the explicit target selection options can be used and instead OpenTofu inspects the given file and reacts in the following ways:

• If the file can be loaded as a saved plan file, behaves like -plan=FILENAME with the same file.

• If the file can be parsed as a local state snapshot file such as those created by tofu state pull, inspects the content of that state file using the same output format as would normally be used to inspect the latest state snapshot.

  The selected state snapshot file must be one associated with the configuration in the current working directory, or else the results are unspecified because the available providers might not match those that were used to create the data in the state snapshot.

Unless you need the legacy behavior of inspecting an arbitrary state snapshot file, we recommend using the new explicit target selection options to make it clearer to OpenTofu what artifact type you wish to inspect.