How to move created resources to modules?

Terraform
1

Hello.

I created resources by terraform.

resource "example" "first" {
  ...
}

I need to create many similar resources, So I create new terraform modules.

Now I want to change my terraform code using my new modules.

How to move created resources to modules?

I don’t want to recreate my resources… (my backend is google storage // I have more than 100 similar resources.)

Help me!

2

There is a new feature being worked on to help with this, but until that is ready the standard solution is to use terraform state mv

2 Likes
3

Indeed, the solution which works with today’s Terraform (v1.0 and earlier) is to explicitly update the state with the new addresses before you create a new plan with your updated configuration:

terraform state mv "example.first" "module.a.example.first"

The above assumes that you have a module "a" block calling your new module and that the resource "example" "first" declaration inside the module represents the same desired object that you originally had in the root module.

If you use Terraform v1.1 or later (Terraform v1.1.0 is currently in beta as I’m writing this) then if your shared modules belong to the same codebase as the root module (that is, if you are calling them using relative paths starting with ../ or ./, so Terraform will treat them as part of the same “package”) then you could get a similar effect by writing an equivalent moved block in your root module:

moved {
  from = example.first
  to   = module.a.example.first
}

With this approach, you can just run a normal terraform apply operation and you should see Terraform report as part of the plan that the existing object moved to the new address, and so Terraform won’t plan to recreate it.

1 Like