How to Import an AWS CloudFront Origin Access Control into Terraform

Import AWS CloudFront Origin Access Control with Terraback (recommended)

Terraback reverse-engineers your live infrastructure: it reads the Amazon CloudFront resource with read-only credentials, generates the HCL, and produces the exact import block. Two commands take you from a live AWS CloudFront Origin Access Control to managed Terraform.

terraback scan all aws --region us-east-1

terraback aws import --method bulk

The Terraform import block

Terraback emits a Terraform 1.5+ import block like the one below. Because the block lives in your configuration, the import is reviewable in a pull request and repeatable across environments.

import {
  to = aws_cloudfront_origin_access_control.s3
  id = "E2T5VTFBZJ3BNB"
}

Example aws_cloudfront_origin_access_control configuration

Here is a realistic AWS CloudFront Origin Access Control block. Terraback generates a fuller version from your actual resource attributes; this is a minimal, valid starting point.

resource "aws_cloudfront_origin_access_control" "s3" {
  name                              = "assets-oac"
  origin_access_control_origin_type = "s3"
  signing_behavior                  = "always"
  signing_protocol                  = "sigv4"
}

Gotchas when importing a AWS CloudFront Origin Access Control

• Origin Access Control (OAC) is the modern replacement for the legacy aws_cloudfront_origin_access_identity (OAI); do not confuse the two import IDs.
• Creating the OAC alone does nothing; the distribution must reference it via origin_access_control_id on the origin block, which lives in the separate aws_cloudfront_distribution resource.
• The S3 bucket policy must grant cloudfront.amazonaws.com access scoped to the distribution ARN, so the linked aws_s3_bucket_policy usually needs editing after import.
• signing_behavior and signing_protocol are required and immutable in practice; copy them exactly to avoid a forced replacement.

Doing it manually with terraform import

The native approach is to write the aws_cloudfront_origin_access_control block by hand, then run terraform import aws_cloudfront_origin_access_control.example <import-id> for every resource, one at a time. That works for a handful of resources, but it does not scale: you author all the HCL yourself and repeat the command for each item. Terraback generates the HCL and the import blocks for your whole account in one pass.

Import other AWS resources