How to Import an AWS S3 Bucket into Terraform

Import AWS S3 Bucket with Terraback (recommended)

Terraback reverse-engineers your live infrastructure: it reads the Amazon S3 resource with read-only credentials, generates the HCL, and produces the exact import block. Two commands take you from a live AWS S3 Bucket 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_s3_bucket.assets
  id = "my-app-assets"
}

Example aws_s3_bucket configuration

Here is a realistic AWS S3 Bucket block. Terraback generates a fuller version from your actual resource attributes; this is a minimal, valid starting point.

resource "aws_s3_bucket" "assets" {
  bucket = "my-app-assets"

  tags = {
    Environment = "production"
  }
}

Gotchas when importing a AWS S3 Bucket

• The modern AWS provider splits the bucket apart: versioning, encryption, lifecycle, policy, and public access block each import as their own aws_s3_bucket_* resource.
• The import ID is the bucket name only, never the ARN or the s3:// URL.
• Bucket names are globally unique, but the bucket must be imported from the region it actually lives in.
• force_destroy defaults to false and is not stored in AWS; set it explicitly if you want Terraform to empty the bucket on delete.

Doing it manually with terraform import

The native approach is to write the aws_s3_bucket block by hand, then run terraform import aws_s3_bucket.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