How to Import an Google Certificate Manager Certificate into Terraform

Import Google Certificate Manager Certificate with Terraback (recommended)

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

terraback scan all gcp --project my-gcp-project

terraback gcp 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 = google_certificate_manager_certificate.web
  id = "projects/my-project/locations/global/certificates/web-cert"
}

Example google_certificate_manager_certificate configuration

Here is a realistic Google Certificate Manager Certificate block. Terraback generates a fuller version from your actual resource attributes; this is a minimal, valid starting point.

resource "google_certificate_manager_certificate" "web" {
  name     = "web-cert"
  location = "global"

  managed {
    domains = ["example.com", "www.example.com"]
  }
}

Gotchas when importing a Google Certificate Manager Certificate

• location is part of the identity and is immutable; global certificates and regional certificates are imported with different location segments.
• For self_managed certificates the PEM body and private key are not returned on import, so Terraform reads them from files and may show a diff until the source matches.
• Managed certificates depend on DNS or load-balancer authorization; importing the certificate does not import the google_certificate_manager_dns_authorization it relies on.
• A certificate is only served once it is attached to a certificate map entry or target proxy; those bindings are separate resources.

Doing it manually with terraform import

The native approach is to write the google_certificate_manager_certificate block by hand, then run terraform import google_certificate_manager_certificate.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 Google Cloud resources