Former

CloudFormation supports lots of different AWS Resources with many parameters. Remembering all of them is a pain and slows down development dramatically.

To make this faster Former lets you create a full CF resource example for any supported Resource. It parses the CloudFormation Resource Specification to get the definition for all resources.

Installation

former can be installed through pip:

pip install former

or install with Whalebrew and Docker:

whalebrew install flomotlik/former

# For getting updates
docker pull flomotlik/former

Alternatively you can clone this repository and run

python setup.py install

Example

You can create an example for any aws resource by calling former with the service and resource name. In the following example we’re creating an AWS::IAM::User Resource:

root@e41871e1eb3e:/app# former iam user
Resources:
  AWSIAMUser:
    Parameters:
      Groups:
      - String
      LoginProfile:
        Password: String - Required
        PasswordResetRequired: Boolean
      ManagedPolicyArns:
      - String
      Path: String
      Policies:
      - PolicyDocument: Json - Required
        PolicyName: String - Required
      UserName: String
    Type: AWS::IAM::User

Some Resources also have a subtype (e.g. LoginProfile for the IAM::User). If you only want to show the subtype you can add it as a third parameter:

root@e41871e1eb3e:/app# former iam user loginprofile
Resources:
  AWSIAMUserLoginProfile:
    Parameters:
      Password: String - Required
      PasswordResetRequired: Boolean
    Type: AWS::IAM::User.LoginProfile

Of course this is not valid CloudFormation as the LoginProfile is not a valid CF Resource. But it helps when you want to get a quick overview for a subtype.

It often helps to open the docs page right with the resource and the --docs or -d option will do that for you and print the full resource to the shell as well.

root@e41871e1eb3e:/app# former iam user loginprofile -d
Resources:
  AWSIAMUserLoginProfile:
    Parameters:
      Password: String - Required
      PasswordResetRequired: Boolean
    Type: AWS::IAM::User.LoginProfile

Options

• --json Print output in json instead of yaml
• --required(-r) Only print required parameters
• --docs(-d) Open the documentation page of the resource in your browser
• --debug Open the documentation page of the resource in your browser