(aws-cloudformation) Deploy a CDK stack in a Lambda

My use case:

• I have a pipeline stack that is defined in Typescript
• I would like this stack to be deployed dynamically via a Lambda with parameters that will be resolved during the Lambda execution

All the documentation examples that I found show how to deploy a CDK stack via a CLI cdk synth command. What I need to achieve is exactly the same but in a Lambda, Typescript, doesn’t really matter, so:

• I need to synthesize the stack out of the TypeScript objects - probably something with the use of DefaultStackSynthesizer
• then I need to pass the template to nodeJS CloudFormation client

I found this but it doesn’t show how to handle the template synthesis part.

I would appreciate some info if this is the correct way to go or that there is maybe any more generic out-of-the-box way to do it.

[mikestopcontinues]

I think this is worth giving more consideration to. There are cases where pipelines is just a bad fit.

For instance, I run a multi-tenant app where a new stack has to be deployed when a user account is created, updated when key details change, and destroyed when the account is closed. This is in addition to pushing out bulk updates across accounts. To do this in pipelines would be incredibly inefficient, as it would have to check all user accounts for changes.

I’m not saying CDK should be redesigned lambda-first, but I think it’s worth an official example of how to handle this situation. The examples out there are broken and incomplete. I’ve started down the path of making this work, and it’s the wild west. The CDK CLI needs to be bundled in a layer. The CDK entry app needs to be bundled separately (probably with a custom cdk.json. Then the lambda func needs deploy privileges. And that’s just the issues I see from the get-go.

If anything, I think the real key to this situation (and many others) is programmatic usage of CDK (filed #15851), but in the interim, there’s got to be a clear way through the lambda issue.

[fab-mindflow]

We are deploying a simple CDK app from lambda. We’ve successfully tried 2 options so far:

• Spawning a CDK process: cumbersome and very slow
• Using aws-cdk classes: simple and amazingly fast (especially with hotswap when that’s possible depending on use case)

Here is the snippet:

  const stackArtifact = app.synth().getStackByName(stack.stackName)
  const chain = new CredentialProviderChain(CredentialProviderChain.defaultProviders)
  const sdkProvider = new SdkProvider(chain, process.env.TARGET_REGION)
  const cloudFormation = new CloudFormationDeployments({ sdkProvider })
  await cloudFormation.deployStack({ stack: stackArtifact, /* hotswap: true */ })

Hope this will become more or less the Programmatic API for CDK.