How to Import an Google Cloud Storage Bucket into Terraform

Import Google Cloud Storage Bucket with Terraback (recommended)

Terraback reverse-engineers your live infrastructure: it reads the Google Cloud Storage resource with read-only credentials, generates the HCL, and produces the exact import block. Two commands take you from a live Google Cloud Storage Bucket 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_storage_bucket.assets
  id = "my-project/my-app-assets"
}

Example google_storage_bucket configuration

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

resource "google_storage_bucket" "assets" {
  name                        = "my-app-assets"
  location                    = "US"
  storage_class               = "STANDARD"
  uniform_bucket_level_access = true
}

Gotchas when importing a Google Cloud Storage Bucket

• You can import by bucket-name alone, but project/bucket-name is safer when the name is ambiguous across projects.
• location is immutable; a mismatch forces a destroy and recreate, which can delete data.
• force_destroy defaults to false; without it Terraform cannot delete a bucket that still holds objects.
• IAM bindings and notifications are separate resources.

Doing it manually with terraform import

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