VS Code - AWS CloudFormation Auto-Template Generator

VS Code extension for automatically generating fully-expanded AWS CloudFormation resource templates.

Features

Insert CloudFormation resource

Displays a prompt where an AWS resource type can be selected, and then inserts the fully-expanded template into the current text editor.

Command Palette > CFN Auto-template: Insert resource

Set AWS profile

Displays a prompt where a preferred AWS profile can be selected. The list of profiles are determined by the provided configuration file path. The AWS region will be automatically set if the selected profile definition includes a region value.

Command Palette > CFN Auto-template: Set profile

Set Template Format

Displays a prompt where a preferred template format can be selected. The only options supported are JSON and YAML. Note that this setting will be ignored if the format of the currently active text editor is set to JSON or YAML, in which case the produced template will be automatically detected.

Command Palette > CFN Auto-template: Set template format

Set Config File Path

Displays a prompt where an absolute path to an AWS configuration file can be provided. This will check that the file exists, parse the file contents, and validate that the file has at least one profile. If all checks pass, it will display a prompt where a preferred AWS profile can be selected.

Command Palette > CFN Auto-template: Set config file path

Set Resource Visibility

Displays a prompt where a preferred resource visibility can be selected. The only options supported by AWS are PUBLIC (AWS-provided resources) and PRIVATE (user-provided custom resources).

Command Palette > CFN Auto-template: Set resource visibility

Set AWS Region

Displays a prompt where a preferred AWS region can be selected, influencing which endpoint API calls are made against. Note that this will override the region value found in the configuration file.

Command Palette > CFN Auto-template: Set region

Bust Cache

By default, fetching a list of resources (public and private) and individual resources (public and private) are cached, per workspace, for 1 day. This convenience method will clear that cache. This can be especially useful for private CloudFormation types that are being registered and deregistered at-will.

Command Palette > CFN Auto-template: Bust cache

Settings

All settings can be modified by going to Preferences > Settings > Extensions > AWS CloudFormation Auto-template Generator

Impetus

When working with AWS CloudFormation templates, I often find myself referencing the official documentation for a particular resource, which references a nested type, which references a nested type, which references...so on and so forth until reaching the string or boolean value that I'm looking for. This extension helps reduce that friction by automatically expanding the full template for any AWS resource, supporting both JSON and YAML templates.

For example, the commonplace AWS::S3::Bucket resource has a property that's nested 5 levels deep until a final string value is reached, with each attribute along the way having it's own structure and sub-attributes:

ReplicationConfiguration
  Rules # This happens to be an array...
    SourceSelectionCriteria
      SseKmsEncryptedObjects
        Status # Finally reached the string value!

I've personally found the approach of working with a fully expanded template beneficial for learning CloudFormation, because it helps present a complete picture of the resource. Often times I know I need an S3 bucket, but it's unclear what options are available or how other resources might reference each other.

Running Locally & Debugging

1. Clone this repo (git clone https://github.com/john-goldsmith/vscode-aws-cloudformation-auto-template-generator.git)
2. Ensure that Node and NPM are installed
3. Run npm install to install dependencies
4. In the "Run" panel of VS Code (View > Run), choose the "Run Extension" configuration, and click "Start Debugging" (shortcut: F5)
5. In VS Code, set breakpoints as desired.

See vsc-extension-quickstart.md for additional details.

Tests

See test/unit for test suite, and Travis CI and Code Climate for coverage. After running tests, an Istanbul coverage report is generated in ./coverage/lcov-report/index.html.

1. Run npm run test:unit

Current coverage:

Test Suites: 32 passed, 32 total
Tests:       133 passed, 133 total

Linting

See .eslintrc.json for configuration options.

1. Run npm run lint

To Do

• i18n / l10n
• DRY up unit tests
• Account for VersionId when describing a resource
• Implement STS