How to Import an Azure Service Bus Subscription into Terraform

Import Azure Service Bus Subscription with Terraback (recommended)

Terraback reverse-engineers your live infrastructure: it reads the Azure Service Bus resource with read-only credentials, generates the HCL, and produces the exact import block. Two commands take you from a live Azure Service Bus Subscription to managed Terraform.

terraback scan all azure --subscription-id YOUR_ID

terraback azure 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 = azurerm_servicebus_subscription.orders
  id = "/subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/resourceGroups/prod-rg/providers/Microsoft.ServiceBus/namespaces/prod-sbns/topics/orders/subscriptions/billing"
}

Example azurerm_servicebus_subscription configuration

Here is a realistic Azure Service Bus Subscription block. Terraback generates a fuller version from your actual resource attributes; this is a minimal, valid starting point.

resource "azurerm_servicebus_subscription" "orders" {
  name               = "billing"
  topic_id           = azurerm_servicebus_topic.orders.id
  max_delivery_count = 10
}

Gotchas when importing a Azure Service Bus Subscription

• The subscription is a child of a topic, which is a child of the namespace; its ID nests through namespaces/<ns>/topics/<topic>/subscriptions/<name>.
• The current provider takes topic_id (the full topic ID), not separate topic_name and namespace_name as older versions did.
• max_delivery_count is required by the provider even though it has a service default.
• The topic and namespace import separately as azurerm_servicebus_topic and azurerm_servicebus_namespace; subscription rules/filters are azurerm_servicebus_subscription_rule.

Doing it manually with terraform import

The native approach is to write the azurerm_servicebus_subscription block by hand, then run terraform import azurerm_servicebus_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 Azure resources