Map API Entities to Terraform Resources

Entity Mapping

Add the x-speakeasy-entity extension to objects in your OpenAPI Specification document to include them as entities in the Terraform provider, such as managed resources. The extension value may be a single string or an array of strings if the object should be represented by multiple API entities.

As a component:

Or inline in a path:

Where you place the x-speakeasy-entity annotation affects the Terraform resource schema structure.

At the top level: Properties are nested objects.
At a lower level: Properties above the annotation are flattened.

Top Level

Results in the following resource schema and configuration:

Lower Level

Results in the following resource schema and configuration:

Warning

Properties above the x-speakeasy-entity annotation are flattened, which could cause conflicts. Apply the annotation carefully to align the structure of the Terraform provider with the API’s intended interaction.

Specify CRUD Operations for API Endpoints

The x-speakeasy-entity-operation annotation specifies CRUD (create, read, update, and delete) operations associated with each endpoint in the OpenAPI spec for a Terraform entity. The value determines the behavior of operations such as create, read, update, and delete and is structured as Entity#operation,operation,...#order:

Entity represents the name of the entity.
operation can be one or more of create, read, update, and delete, concatenated with commas.
order is optional and can be used to define additional API calls that should be invoked for a given CRUD invocation.

Behavior of Operations

Entity#create makes the entity a Terraform resource.
Entity#read ensures consistency with Terraform state, updates attributes, and generates a data source.
Entity#update provides update support for the resource. Without it, any attribute change requires resource replacement (ForceNew).
Entity#delete enables deletion of the resource. Without it, no action is taken on deletion.
Entity#create,update (idempotent operations) indicates the API is idempotent. Combine these operations to allow the same API call to create new objects and update existing ones, depending on attribute changes.

In this example, a Pet managed resource with full create, read, update, and delete lifecycle and Pet data resource (due to Pet#read) are defined:

Note

Terraform generation automatically handles pagination implementation details via the x-speakeasy-pagination extension. This includes paging through all responses and removing unnecessary pagination handling properties from the schema.

In this example, an automatically paginated Pets data resource is defined:

Multiple API Operations for One Resource

When multiple API operations are necessary for a single resource, use the additional entity-ordering capabilities of the x-speakeasy-entity-operation annotation.

Multiple API operations for one resource can be combined with multiple entity operations of one API operation for multiple resources as necessary.

One API Operation for Multiple Resources

When a single API operation is necessary for multiple resources, use multiple entity operation entries with the x-speakeasy-entity-operation annotation.

One API operation for multiple resources can be combined with the entity operation ordering of multiple API operations for one resource as necessary.

Manual association between Operations and Resource / Data Sources

The default behavior within Speakeasy is to automatically infer a data source from all operations that have an x-speakeasy-entity-operation: Entity#read association defined.

For some APIs, you might want the data source to use a “search” endpoint (e.g., search for an entity by name, where name is non-unique), while using a “get” operation for the resource (e.g., to find an entity by ID for state reconciliation).

In this case, use an object syntax for the x-speakeasy-entity-operation annotation to explicitly control whether an operation generates a resource, a data source, or both:

This syntax allows you to:

Prevent automatic generation of a data source by setting terraform-datasource to null
Prevent invocation of the operation during the resource’s Read method (“invoked as part of terraform state refresh”) by setting terraform-resource to null

For example, the configuration above declares that getThing is associated with just a resource, and a data source should not be automatically generated.

Wrapping Additional API Operation Response Data

When defining multiple API operations for a single entity, an API definition may be written such that those API operation response are a flattened object. When adding those additional operations to the entity, those flattened object properties are added to the top level of the resource schema by default.

Use x-speakeasy-wrapped-attribute extension to override this behavior, which will create a wrapping attribute that contains the underlying object properties in the final resource schema.

In this example, the resource will put the second API operation response properties underneath a subconfig attribute:

Resources with Soft Delete

By default, a generated managed resource uses the HTTP 404 Not Found status code on read to automatically remove the resource from the Terraform state which causes the next Terraform plan to propose recreating the resource. For resource APIs that support soft delete (grace time period before the resource is fully deleted), the x-speakeasy-soft-delete-property annotation adds a check against a read response property to also propose resource recreation.

For managed resources, any x-speakeasy-soft-delete-property attribute is omitted from the schema and state. For data resources, the attribute remains to preserve client-side filtering capabilities.

In this example, the resource will be proposed for recreation if the deleted_at property has a value:

Last updated on July 14, 2025