Consider Surfacing Null Map Values In Query JSON

[bflad]

Terraform CLI and Provider Versions

Terraform v1.4.4
on darwin_arm64

• provider registry.terraform.io/hashicorp/external v2.3.1

Use Cases or Problem Statement

Upon switching from terraform-plugin-sdk to terraform-plugin-framework, the data available from the query attribute map is now more robust. While the prior SDK completely filtered map keys with null values, the new one properly keeps those map keys with their associated null values. This means the JSON could contain:

"null_map_key": null

However, changing this should be considered a breaking change as programs may not be expecting null JSON values.

Proposal

In the next major version, and if the query is not converted into a generic string type (#17), consider removing any filtering of map keys for null map values and allow those null values to pass through to the query JSON.

How much impact is this issue causing?

Medium

Additional Information

• Migrate to Terraform Plugin Framework #184
• External version 2.3.0 appears to break python packaging in https://github.com/terraform-aws-modules/terraform-aws-lambda #193
• 2.3.1: Breaking change in that a null value is converted to "" instead of simply not present #208

Code of Conduct

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