How to Import an AWS SNS Topic Subscription into Terraform

Import AWS SNS Topic Subscription with Terraback (recommended)

Terraback reverse-engineers your live infrastructure: it reads the Amazon SNS resource with read-only credentials, generates the HCL, and produces the exact import block. Two commands take you from a live AWS SNS Topic Subscription 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_sns_topic_subscription.email
  id = "arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:123456789012:app-alerts:8a21d249-4329-4871-acc6-7be709c6ea7f"
}

Example aws_sns_topic_subscription configuration

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

resource "aws_sns_topic_subscription" "email" {
  topic_arn = "arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:123456789012:app-alerts"
  protocol  = "email"
  endpoint  = "ops@example.com"
}

Gotchas when importing a AWS SNS Topic Subscription

• Import by the full subscription ARN (the topic ARN plus a trailing subscription UUID), not the topic ARN alone.
• email and email-json subscriptions require manual confirmation and report PendingConfirmation until the recipient clicks the link; they cannot be fully managed by Terraform.
• The subscription is separate from the aws_sns_topic; import or declare the topic first and reference it via topic_arn.
• endpoint and protocol are immutable; changing either forces the subscription to be destroyed and recreated.

Doing it manually with terraform import

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