Params

Params are configs that you define to affect how the templates behave at runtime when the CloudFormation stack is launched.

Location

The configs files are located at configs/BLUEPRINT/params. Example:

configs/
├── ec2
│   └── params
│       ├── development.txt
│       └── production.txt
└── ecs-asg
    └── params
        ├── development.txt
        └── production.txt

Examples

Lono provides a way to specify the parameters in a simple key=value format commonly found in env files. This format is less prone to human error than the AWS verbose parameter file format. When lono generate is ran it processes the files in configs/BLUEPRINT/params folders and outputs the AWS JSON format file in output/BLUEPRINT/params folder. Here’s an example:

configs/demo/params/development.txt:

KeyName=default
InstanceType=t2.micro

This results in:

[
  {
    "ParameterKey": "InstanceType",
    "ParameterValue": "t2.micro"
  },
  {
    "ParameterKey": "KeyName",
    "ParameterValue": "default"
  }
]

These files can be used to launch the CloudFormation stack with the aws cloudformation CLI tool manually if you like. Though the lono cfn lifecycle commands handle this automatically for you. For example, running lono cfn deploy STACK_NAME will automatically generate the param files and use it when launching the stack.

ERB Support and SSM Helper

Parameters files support ERB evaluation. One interesting use of ERB is to use the ssm helper method to substitute secrets from SSM parameter store. Example:

configs/demo/params/development.txt:

KeyName=<%= ssm("/#{Lono.env}/key_name") %>
InstanceType=t2.micro

Here’s an example of storing an SSM parameter:

aws ssm put-parameter --name /development/key_name --value main-2019-11-23 --type SecureString

To confirm that parameter is stored:

 aws ssm get-parameter --name /development/key_name --with-decryption

Shared Variables Substitution

Shared variables substitution is supported in params file. Here’s an example:

configs/demo/variables/base.rb:

@ami = "ami-12345"

configs/demo/params/base.txt:

Ami=<%= @ami %>

Will produce:

output/demo/params/mystack.json:

[
  {
    "ParameterKey": "Ami",
    "ParameterValue": "ami-12345"
  }
]

Layering Support

Lono param files also support layering which is covered in Layering Support.

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