acme-import-existing

ACME Corp Import Existing Resources

The most common entry point for teams adopting Terraform on an existing Coolify instance. Instead of recreating resources from scratch, this scenario shows how to bring pre-existing Coolify resources under Terraform management.

The Story

ACME Corp has been running services on Coolify for months, managing everything through the web UI. They now want to adopt infrastructure as code with Terraform. Rather than tearing down and rebuilding, they import their existing project, applications, and environment variables into Terraform state.

What Gets Created

#	Resource	Type	Purpose
1	coolify_project.existing	Project	Groups imported resources
2	coolify_application_docker_image.web	Application	Nginx web server
3	coolify_environment_variable.app_env	Env var	APP_ENV=production

Import Workflow

1. Discover existing resource UUIDs

Use data sources or the Coolify API:

# List projects
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $COOLIFY_TOKEN" \
  "$COOLIFY_ENDPOINT/api/v1/projects" | jq '.[] | {uuid, name}'

# List applications in a project environment
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $COOLIFY_TOKEN" \
  "$COOLIFY_ENDPOINT/api/v1/projects/<project-uuid>/production" \
  | jq '.applications[] | {uuid, name}'

2. Write the Terraform configuration

Define resource blocks in .tf files that match your existing setup (see main.tf).

3. Import with CLI commands

# Simple UUID import for projects:
terraform import coolify_project.existing <project-uuid>

# Compound import for applications (recommended):
terraform import coolify_application_docker_image.web \
  <project-uuid>:<server-uuid>:production:<app-uuid>

# Composite key import for environment variables:
terraform import coolify_environment_variable.app_env \
  application:<app-uuid>:<env-var-uuid>

3b. Or use import blocks (Terraform 1.5+)

See import.tf for the declarative alternative. Add import blocks, run terraform plan to preview, then terraform apply to execute.

4. Reconcile and apply

# Preview what Terraform detects
terraform plan

# Fill in fields not returned by the API (see Known Limitations below)
# Then confirm no changes
terraform plan

Known Limitations

The Coolify API does not return all fields in GET responses. After importing, you may need to set these fields manually in your .tf configuration:

Resource	Fields to set manually
Applications	project_uuid, server_uuid, environment_name (use compound import to avoid this)
Databases	project_uuid, server_uuid, environment_name, password fields
coolify_github_app	client_secret, webhook_secret, private_key_uuid
coolify_private_key	private_key (needs root or read:sensitive API permission)
coolify_environment_variable	value (sensitive, not reliably returned)

For the full list, see the Import Guide.

Prerequisites

1. A running Coolify instance (v4+)
2. An API token (Security > API Tokens)
3. A registered server UUID (Settings > Servers)
4. Terraform >= 1.0

Usage

cp terraform.tfvars.example terraform.tfvars
# Edit terraform.tfvars with your values
terraform init
terraform plan
terraform apply

Clean Up

terraform destroy