How to Import an Google Cloud Logging Project Sink into Terraform

Import Google Cloud Logging Project Sink with Terraback (recommended)

Terraback reverse-engineers your live infrastructure: it reads the Cloud Logging resource with read-only credentials, generates the HCL, and produces the exact import block. Two commands take you from a live Google Cloud Logging Project Sink 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_logging_project_sink.audit
  id = "projects/my-project/sinks/audit-to-bq"
}

Example google_logging_project_sink configuration

Here is a realistic Google Cloud Logging Project Sink block. Terraback generates a fuller version from your actual resource attributes; this is a minimal, valid starting point.

resource "google_logging_project_sink" "audit" {
  name        = "audit-to-bq"
  destination = "bigquery.googleapis.com/projects/my-project/datasets/audit"
  filter      = "logName:\"cloudaudit.googleapis.com\""

  unique_writer_identity = true
}

Gotchas when importing a Google Cloud Logging Project Sink

• This is the project-level sink; folder, organization, and billing-account sinks are separate google_logging_*_sink resource types with different import paths.
• The sink writes with a service account (writer_identity); that identity still needs IAM access granted on the destination, which is a separate binding.
• unique_writer_identity is set at creation and changing it recreates the sink and its writer identity.
• The destination string must be the full service URI form, for example storage.googleapis.com/projects/.../buckets/... or bigquery.googleapis.com/....

Doing it manually with terraform import

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