CDK - Making CloudFormation easier

 In the previous post I created my first AWS Resource using AWS CloudFormation. This was done using a JSON file called the CloudFormation template.

While CloudFormation makes it possible to codify our AWS resources, the templates used for CloudFormation have their limitations:

• The Templates can be represented in only JSON or YAML.
• This means the files tend to be very verbose. 
• We do not have the logic abilities that a programming language provides.

Enter CDK (or Cloud Development Kit)

• Most programmers are comfortable working with programming languages like Java, and .NET. CDK allows us to model our resources in these languages (also Python or TypeScript)
• Programming languages allow for better organization of infrastructure into modules, reusing these modules as well as IDE benefits.
• At its backend CDK uses CloudFormation. So all benefits of CloudFormation are available here.

The first step is to ensure you have AWS CLI installed (since at the end of the day, CDK will use CloudFormation). Also ensure that the AWS user credentials being used to run cli has admin access.

The next step is to install AWS CDK. CDK requires Node.js to be installed. With that CDK can be installed through the npm package manager.

Now that installation is done we can setup and run CDK. To create a CDK project

1	cdk init app --language typescript

This will create a basic project with required default configurations.

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ls README.md cdk.json jest.config.js node_modules package.json tsconfig.json bin cdk.out lib package-lock.json test

The application starter file is based in the bin folder:

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import 'source-map-support/register'; import * as cdk from '@aws-cdk/core'; import { CdkAppStack } from '../lib/cdk-app-stack'; //This is the starting point for the app const app = new cdk.App(); new CdkAppStack(app, 'CdkAppStack');

The actual code is in CdkAppStack.ts :

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import * as cdk from '@aws-cdk/core'; import * as dd from '@aws-cdk/aws-dynamodb'; export class CdkAppStack extends cdk.Stack { constructor(scope: cdk.Construct, id: string, props?: cdk.StackProps) { super(scope, id, props); // The code that defines your stack goes here new dd.Table(this, 'cdkSampleTable', { tableName: 'cdkSampleTable', billingMode: dd.BillingMode.PROVISIONED, partitionKey: { name: 'hashKey', type: dd.AttributeType.STRING }, readCapacity: 5, writeCapacity:5 }); } }

This is all the code needed to create a Dynamo db table. Compare this to the CloudFormation Template I had to write in the previous post. I can even write tests to ensure the code runs correctly.

To deploy this code:

cdk deploy
CdkAppStack: deploying...
CdkAppStack: creating CloudFormation changeset...
[██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████] (3/3)

 ✅  CdkAppStack

Stack ARN:
arn:aws:cloudformation:us-east-1:060315252813:stack/CdkAppStack/083f6000-26d6-11eb-8629-0a818cac4dad

Based on the aws configure settings, the Dynamo Table will be setup in the set region and set account. To see the CloudFormation template generated by the code, cdk provides a command - cdk synth

cdk synth
Resources:
  cdkSampleTable964E91EB:
    Type: AWS::DynamoDB::Table
    Properties:
      KeySchema:
        - AttributeName: hashKey
          KeyType: HASH
      AttributeDefinitions:
        - AttributeName: hashKey
          AttributeType: S
      ProvisionedThroughput:
        ReadCapacityUnits: 5
        WriteCapacityUnits: 5
      TableName: cdkSampleTable
    UpdateReplacePolicy: Retain
    DeletionPolicy: Retain
    Metadata:
      aws:cdk:path: CdkAppStack/cdkSampleTable/Resource
  CDKMetadata:
    Type: AWS::CDK::Metadata

There was one another setup step that was needed - I needed to install the aws-dynamodb package

npm install @aws-cdk/aws-dynamodb
npm WARN cdk-app@0.1.0 No repository field.
npm WARN cdk-app@0.1.0 No license field.

+ @aws-cdk/aws-dynamodb@1.73.0
added 20 packages from 1 contributor and audited 762 packages in 7.773s

27 packages are looking for funding
  run `npm fund` for details

found 0 vulnerabilities