Terraform Commands Cheat Sheet

Format and Validate

Command	Description
terraform fmt	Reformat your configuration in the standard style
terraform validate	Check whether the configuration is valid

Initialize Working Directory

Command	Description
terraform init	Prepare your working directory for other commands

Plan, Deploy and Cleanup

Command	Description
terraform apply --auto-approve	Create or update infrastructure without confirmation prompt
terraform destroy --auto-approve	Destroy previously-created infrastructure without confirmation prompt
terraform plan -out plan.out	Output the deployment plan to plan.out
terraform apply plan.out	Use the plan.out to deploy infrastructure
terraform plan -destroy	Outputs a destroy plan
terraform apply -target=aws_instance.myinstance	Only apply/deploy changes to targeted resource
terraform apply -var myregion=us-east-1	Pass a variable via CLI while applying a configuration
terraform apply -lock=true	Lock the state file so it can't be modified
terraform apply refresh=false	Do not reconcile state file with real-world resources
terraform apply --parallelism=5	Number of simultaneous resource operations
terraform refresh	Reconcile the state in Terraform state file with real-world resources
terraform providers	Get informatino about providers used in the current configuration

Workspaces

Command	Description
terraform workspace new <workspace>	Create a new workspace
terraform workspace select default	Change to a workspace
terraform workspace list	List all workspaces

State Manipulation

Command	Description
terraform state show aws_instance.myinstance	Show details stored in the Terraform state file
terraform state pull > terraform.tfstate	Output Terraform state to a file
terraform state mv aws_iam_role.my_ssm_role module.mymodule	Move a resource tracked via state to different module
terraform state replace-provider hashicorp/aws registry.custom.com/aws	Replace an existing provider with another
terraform state list	List all resources tracked in the Terraform state file
terraform state rm aws_instance.myinstance	Unmanage a resource, delete it from the Terraform state file

Import and Outputs

Command	Description
terraform import <resource_type>.<resource> <id>	Import a Resource
terraform output	List all outputs
terraform output <output>	List a specific output
terraform output -json	List all outputs in JSON format

Terraform Cloud

Command	Description
terraform login	Login to Terraform Cloud with an API token
terraform logout	Logout from Terraform Cloud