terraform/website/docs/configuration/functions/timestamp.html.md

layout	page_title	sidebar_current	description
functions	timestamp - Functions - Configuration Language	docs-funcs-datetime-timestamp	The timestamp function returns a string representation of the current date and time.

timestamp Function

-> Note: This page is about Terraform 0.12 and later. For Terraform 0.11 and earlier, see 0.11 Configuration Language: Interpolation Syntax.

timestamp returns a UTC timestamp string in RFC 3339 format.

In the Terraform language, timestamps are conventionally represented as strings using RFC 3339 "Date and Time format" syntax, and so timestamp returns a string in this format.

The result of this function will change every second, so using this function directly with resource attributes will cause a diff to be detected on every Terraform run. We do not recommend using this function in resource attributes, but in rare cases it can be used in conjunction with the ignore_changes lifecycle meta-argument to take the timestamp only on initial creation of the resource.

Due to the constantly changing return value, the result of this function cannot be predicted during Terraform's planning phase, and so the timestamp will be taken only once the plan is being applied.

Examples

> timestamp()
2018-05-13T07:44:12Z

Related Functions

• formatdate can convert the resulting timestamp to other date and time formats.