AWS CloudFormation Command Line Operations

Internal

• CloudFormation Operations

Validate Templates

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/cloudformation/validate-template.html

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/APIReference/API_ValidateTemplate.html

aws cloudformation validate-template --template-body file://.../stack-template.yml

Create a Stack

aws cloudformation create-stack --stack-name stack-name --template-body file://.../stack-template.yml [--parameters ParameterKey=Parm1,ParameterValue=test1 ParameterKey=Parm2,ParameterValue=test2]

If the template is supposed to create IAM roles, the command line will fail with a message similar to "An error occurred (InsufficientCapabilitiesException) when calling the CreateStack operation: Requires capabilities : [CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM]", unless the capability is explicitly provided on command line with:

aws cloudformation create-stack --capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM ...

A stack can only be created once, a subsequent invocation of the 'create-stack' command will result in:

An error occurred (AlreadyExistsException) when calling the CreateStack operation: Stack [api-experiments] already exists

Update a Stack

aws cloudformation update-stack --stack-name  stack-name --template-body file://.../stack-template.yml [--parameters ParameterKey=Parm1,ParameterValue=test1 ParameterKey=Parm2,ParameterValue=test2]

Updates a stack as specified in the template. After the call completes successfully, the stack update starts.

Delete a Stack

aws cloudformation delete-stack --stack-name stack-name

Describe a Stack

aws cloudformation describe-stacks

Obtaining the Template of an Existing Stack

This is useful when we want to apply an update, but we don't have the original template document.

aws cloudformation get-template

Organizatorium

aws cloudformation package --template-file deployment-stack.yaml --s3-bucket $TARGET_BUCKET --output-template-file new-deployment-stack.yaml