aws-cdk.aws-cloudformation 1.12.0

CDK Constructs for AWS CloudFormation

AWS CloudFormation Construct Library

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This module is part of the AWS Cloud Development Kit project.

Custom Resources

Custom Resources are CloudFormation resources that are implemented by arbitrary user code. They can do arbitrary lookups or modifications during a CloudFormation synthesis run.

You will typically use Lambda to implement a Construct implemented as a Custom Resource (though SNS topics can be used as well). Your Lambda function will be sent a CREATE, UPDATE or DELETE message, depending on the CloudFormation life cycle. It will perform whatever actions it needs to, and then return any number of output values which will be available as attributes of your Construct. In turn, those can be used as input to other Constructs in your model.

In general, consumers of your Construct will not need to care whether it is implemented in term of other CloudFormation resources or as a custom resource.

Note: when implementing your Custom Resource using a Lambda, use a SingletonLambda so that even if your custom resource is instantiated multiple times, the Lambda will only get uploaded once.

Example

The following shows an example of a declaring Custom Resource that copies files into an S3 bucket during deployment (the implementation of the actual Lambda handler is elided for brevity).

interface CopyOperationProps {
  sourceBucket: IBucket;
  targetBucket: IBucket;
}

class CopyOperation extends Construct {
  constructor(parent: Construct, name: string, props: CopyOperationProps) {
    super(parent, name);

    const lambdaProvider = new lambda.SingletonFunction(this, 'Provider', {
      uuid: 'f7d4f730-4ee1-11e8-9c2d-fa7ae01bbebc',
      runtime: lambda.Runtime.PYTHON_3_7,
      code: lambda.Code.fromAsset('../copy-handler'),
      handler: 'index.handler',
      timeout: Duration.seconds(60),
    });

    new CustomResource(this, 'Resource', {
      provider: CustomResourceProvider.lambda(lambdaProvider),
      properties: {
        sourceBucketArn: props.sourceBucket.bucketArn,
        targetBucketArn: props.targetBucket.bucketArn,
      }
    });
  }
}

The aws-cdk-examples repository has examples for adding custom resources.

References

See the following section of the docs on details to write Custom Resources:

• Introduction
• Reference
• Code Reference

Nested Stacks

Nested stacks are stacks created as part of other stacks. You create a nested stack within another stack by using the NestedStack construct.

As your infrastructure grows, common patterns can emerge in which you declare the same components in multiple templates. You can separate out these common components and create dedicated templates for them. Then use the resource in your template to reference other templates, creating nested stacks.

For example, assume that you have a load balancer configuration that you use for most of your stacks. Instead of copying and pasting the same configurations into your templates, you can create a dedicated template for the load balancer. Then, you just use the resource to reference that template from within other templates.

The following example will define a single top-level stack that contains two nested stacks: each one with a single Amazon S3 bucket:

import { Stack, Construct, StackProps } from '@aws-cdk/core';
import cfn = require('@aws-cdk/aws-cloudformation');
import s3 = require('@aws-cdk/aws-s3');

class MyNestedStack extends cfn.NestedStack {
  constructor(scope: Construct, id: string, props: cfn.NestedStackProps) {
    super(scope, id, props);

    new s3.Bucket(this, 'NestedBucket');
  }
}

class MyParentStack extends Stack {
  constructor(scope: Construct, id: string, props: StackProps) {
    super(scope, id, props);

    new MyNestedStack(scope, 'Nested1');
    new MyNestedStack(scope, 'Nested2');
  }
}

Resources references across nested/parent boundaries (even with multiple levels of nesting) will be wired by the AWS CDK through CloudFormation parameters and outputs. When a resource from a parent stack is referenced by a nested stack, a CloudFormation parameter will automatically be added to the nested stack and assigned from the parent; when a resource from a nested stack is referenced by a parent stack, a CloudFormation output will be automatically be added to the nested stack and referenced using Fn::GetAtt "Outputs.Xxx" from the parent.

Nested stacks also support the use of Docker image and file assets.