cdk synth

Synthesize a template from your app #

AWS CDK apps are effectively only a definition of your infrastructure using code. When CDK apps are executed, they produce (or “synthesize”, in CDK parlance) an AWS CloudFormation template for each stack defined in your application.

To synthesize a CDK app, use the cdk synth command. Let’s check out the template synthesized from the sample app.

The CDK CLI requires you to be in the same directory as your cdk.json file. If you have changed directories in your terminal, please navigate back now.

$ cdk ls
cdk_workshop
$ cd cdk_workshop

We can then synthesize:

$ cdk synth

This will output the following CloudFormation template:

Resources:
  CdkworkshopQueue18864164:
    Type: AWS::SQS::Queue
    Properties:
      VisibilityTimeout: 300
    Metadata:
      aws:cdk:path: cdkworkshop/CdkworkshopQueue/Resource
  CdkworkshopQueuePolicy78D5BF45:
    Type: AWS::SQS::QueuePolicy
    Properties:
      PolicyDocument:
        Statement:
          - Action: sqs:SendMessage
            Condition:
              ArnEquals:
                aws:SourceArn:
                  Ref: CdkworkshopTopic58CFDD3D
            Effect: Allow
            Principal:
              Service: sns.amazonaws.com
            Resource:
              Fn::GetAtt:
                - CdkworkshopQueue18864164
                - Arn
        Version: "2012-10-17"
      Queues:
        - Ref: CdkworkshopQueue18864164
    Metadata:
      aws:cdk:path: cdkworkshop/CdkworkshopQueue/Policy/Resource
  CdkworkshopQueuecdkworkshopCdkworkshopTopic7642CC2FCF70B637:
    Type: AWS::SNS::Subscription
    Properties:
      Protocol: sqs
      TopicArn:
        Ref: CdkworkshopTopic58CFDD3D
      Endpoint:
        Fn::GetAtt:
          - CdkworkshopQueue18864164
          - Arn
    Metadata:
      aws:cdk:path: cdkworkshop/CdkworkshopQueue/cdkworkshopCdkworkshopTopic7642CC2F/Resource
  CdkworkshopTopic58CFDD3D:
    Type: AWS::SNS::Topic
    Metadata:
      aws:cdk:path: cdkworkshop/CdkworkshopTopic/Resource
  CDKMetadata:
    Type: AWS::CDK::Metadata
    Properties:
      Modules: aws-cdk=1.18.0,jsii-runtime=Python/3.7.3

As you can see, this template includes a bunch of resources:

AWS::SQS::Queue - our queue
AWS::SNS::Topic - our topic
AWS::SNS::Subscription - the subscription between the queue and the topic
AWS::SQS::QueuePolicy - the IAM policy which allows this topic to send messages to the queue

The AWS::CDK::Metadata resource is automatically added by the toolkit to every stack. It is used by the AWS CDK team for analytics and to allow us to identify versions with security issues. See Version Reporting in the AWS CDK User Guide for more details. We will omit the metadata resource in diff views for the rest of this workshop