steampipe plugin install awscfnsteampipe plugin install awscfn

AWS CloudFormation + Steampipe

An AWS CloudFormation template file is used to declare resources, variables, modules, and more.

Steampipe is an open source CLI to instantly query data using SQL.

Query all resources in your AWS CloudFormation files:

select
  name,
  type,
  jsonb_pretty(properties) as properties
from
  awscfn_resource;

+------------+------------------+---------------------------------------+
| name       | type             | properties                            |
+------------+------------------+---------------------------------------+
| CFNUser    | AWS::IAM::User   | {                                     |
|            |                  |     "Path": "/steampipe/"             |
|            |                  | }                                     |
| DevBucket  | AWS::S3::Bucket  | {                                     |
|            |                  |     "BucketName": "TestWebBucket",    |
|            |                  |     "AccessControl": "PublicRead",    |
|            |                  |     "WebsiteConfiguration": {         |
|            |                  |         "IndexDocument": "index.html" |
|            |                  |     }                                 |
|            |                  | }                                     |
| TestVolume | AWS::EC2::Volume | {                                     |
|            |                  |     "Iops": 100,                      |
|            |                  |     "Size": 100,                      |
|            |                  |     "Tags": [                         |
|            |                  |         {                             |
|            |                  |             "Key": "poc",             |
|            |                  |             "Value": "turbot"         |
|            |                  |         }                             |
|            |                  |     ],                                |
|            |                  |     "Encrypted": false,               |
|            |                  |     "VolumeType": "io1",              |
|            |                  |     "AutoEnableIO": false,            |
|            |                  |     "AvailabilityZone": "",           |
|            |                  |     "MultiAttachEnabled": false       |
|            |                  | }                                     |
+------------+------------------+---------------------------------------+

Documentation

Table definitions & examples →

Get started

Install

Download and install the latest AWS CloudFormation plugin:

steampipe plugin install awscfn

Credentials

No credentials are required.

Configuration

Installing the latest awscfn plugin will create a config file (~/.steampipe/config/awscfn.spc) with a single connection named awscfn:

connection "awscfn" {
  plugin = "awscfn"

  # Paths is a list of locations to search for CloudFormation template files
  # Paths can be configured with a local directory, a remote Git repository URL, or an S3 bucket URL
  # Wildcard based searches are supported, including recursive searches
  # Local paths are resolved relative to the current working directory (CWD)

  # For example:
  #  - "*.template" matches all CloudFormation template files in the CWD
  #  - "**/*.template" matches all CloudFormation template files in the CWD and all sub-directories
  #  - "../*.template" matches all CloudFormation template files in the CWD's parent directory
  #  - "ELB*.template" matches all CloudFormation template files starting with "ELB" in the CWD
  #  - "/path/to/dir/*.template" matches all CloudFormation template files in a specific directory
  #  - "/path/to/dir/main.template" matches a specific file

  # If paths includes "*", all files (including non-CloudFormation template files) in
  # the CWD will be matched, which may cause errors if incompatible file types exist

  # Defaults to CWD
  paths = ["*.template", "*.yaml", "*.yml", "*.json"]
}

Supported Path Formats

The paths config argument is flexible and can search for AWS CloudFormation template files from several different sources, e.g., local directory paths, Git, S3.

The following sources are supported:

Paths may include wildcards and support ** for recursive matching. For example:

connection "awscfn" {
  plugin = "awscfn"

  paths = [
    "*.template",
    "~/*.template",
    "github.com/awslabs/aws-cloudformation-templates//*.template",
    "github.com/awslabs/aws-cloudformation-templates//aws/services/ElasticLoadBalancing//*.yaml",
    "gitlab.com/versioncontrol1/cloudformationproject//substacks//*.yaml",
    "s3::https://demo-integrated-2022.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/template_examples//*.yaml"
  ]
}

Note: If any path matches on * without a valid AWS CloudFormation template file extension (i.e. .template, .yaml etc.), all files (including non-CloudFormation template files) in the directory will be matched, which may cause errors if incompatible file types exist.

Configuring Local File Paths

You can define a list of local directory paths to search for AWS CloudFormation template files. Paths are resolved relative to the current working directory. For example:

*.template matches all CloudFormation template files in the CWD.
**/*.template matches all CloudFormation template files in the CWD and all sub-directories.
../*.template matches all CloudFormation template files in the CWD's parent directory.
ELB*.template matches all CloudFormation template files starting with "ELB" in the CWD.
/path/to/dir/*.template matches all CloudFormation template files in a specific directory. For example:
- ~/*.template matches all CloudFormation template files in the home directory.
- ~/**/*.template matches all CloudFormation template files recursively in the home directory.
/path/to/dir/main.template matches a specific file.

connection "awscfn" {
  plugin = "awscfn"

  paths = [ "*.template", "~/*.template", "/path/to/dir/main.template" ]
}

NOTE: If paths includes *, all files (including non-CloudFormation template files) in the CWD will be matched, which may cause errors if incompatible file types exist.

Configuring Remote Git Repository URLs

You can also configure paths with any Git remote repository URLs, e.g., GitHub, BitBucket, GitLab. The plugin will then attempt to retrieve any AWS CloudFormation template files from the remote repositories.

For example:

github.com/awslabs/aws-cloudformation-templates//*.template matches all top-level CloudFormation template files in the specified github repository.
github.com/awslabs/aws-cloudformation-templates//**/*.yaml matches all CloudFormation template files in the specified github repository and all sub-directories.
github.com/awslabs/aws-cloudformation-templates?ref=fix_7677//**/*.template matches all CloudFormation template files in the specific tag of github repository.
github.com/awslabs/aws-cloudformation-templates//aws/services/ElasticLoadBalancing//*.yaml matches all CloudFormation template files in the specified folder path.

You can specify a subdirectory after a double-slash (//) if you want to download only a specific subdirectory from a downloaded directory.

connection "awscfn" {
  plugin = "awscfn"

  paths = [ "github.com/awslabs/aws-cloudformation-templates//aws/services/ElasticLoadBalancing//*.yaml" ]
}

Similarly, you can define a list of GitLab and BitBucket URLs to search for AWS CloudFormation template files:

connection "awscfn" {
  plugin = "awscfn"

  paths = [
    "github.com/awslabs/aws-cloudformation-templates//**/*.template",
    "github.com/awslabs/aws-cloudformation-templates//aws/services/ElasticLoadBalancing//**/*.yaml",
    "gitlab.com/versioncontrol1/cloudformationproject//substacks//*.yaml",
    "gitlab.com/versioncontrol1/cloudformationproject//**/*.yaml"
  ]
}

Configuring S3 URLs

You can also query all AWS CloudFormation template files stored inside an S3 bucket (public or private) using the bucket URL.

Accessing a Private Bucket

In order to access your files in a private S3 bucket, you will need to configure your credentials. You can use your configured AWS profile from local ~/.aws/config, or pass the credentials using the standard AWS environment variables, e.g., AWS_PROFILE, AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, AWS_REGION.

We recommend using AWS profiles for authentication.

Note: Make sure that region is configured in the config. If not set in the config, region will be fetched from the standard environment variable AWS_REGION.

You can also authenticate your request by setting the AWS profile and region in paths. For example:

connection "awscfn" {
  plugin = "awscfn"

  paths = [
    "s3::https://bucket-2.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com//*.yaml?aws_profile=<AWS_PROFILE>",
    "s3::https://bucket-2.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/test_folder//*.template?aws_profile=<AWS_PROFILE>"
  ]
}

Note:

In order to access the bucket, the IAM user or role will require the following IAM permissions:

s3:ListBucket
s3:GetObject
s3:GetObjectVersion

If the bucket is in another AWS account, the bucket policy will need to grant access to your user or role. For example:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "ReadBucketObject",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "AWS": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/YOUR_USER"
      },
      "Action": ["s3:ListBucket", "s3:GetObject", "s3:GetObjectVersion"],
      "Resource": ["arn:aws:s3:::test-bucket1", "arn:aws:s3:::test-bucket1/*"]
    }
  ]
}

Accessing a Public Bucket

Public access granted to buckets and objects through ACLs and bucket policies allows any user access to data in the bucket. We do not recommend making S3 buckets public, but if there are specific objects you'd like to make public, please see How can I grant public read access to some objects in my Amazon S3 bucket?.

You can query any public S3 bucket directly using the URL without passing credentials. For example:

connection "awscfn" {
  plugin = "awscfn"

  paths = [
    "s3::https://bucket-1.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/test_folder//*.yaml",
    "s3::https://bucket-2.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/test_folder//**/*.template"
  ]
}

Get involved

Open source: https://github.com/turbot/steampipe-plugin-awscfn
Community: Slack Channel

turbot/awscfn