feat(servicecatalog): allow creating a CFN Product Version with CDK code

[arcrank]

Add ability to define a product version entirely within CDK as opposed to referencing templates or local assets.
The service catalog ProductStack is similar to NestedStacks that do not deploy themselves but rather are referenced
by the parent stacks. The resources defined in your product are added to the product stack like any other cdk app.

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By submitting this pull request, I confirm that my contribution is made under the terms of the Apache-2.0 license

Co-authored-by: Dillon Ponzo dponzo18@gmail.com

[gitpod-io]

[skinny85]

Looks great @arcrank! A few comments before we merge this in.

[skinny85]

Mis-clicked on "Comment" instead of "Request changes".

Pull request has been modified.

[arcrank]

So there are two things that stick out.

1. Regarding us calling the preparing template call ourselves rather than letting it be handled, we call it and resolve the path ourselves in constructor, the tests fail if we don't, so either those need to be fixed. Is there a specific example for where this would fail that I can use to build off of?
2. Regarding how to verify the multiple stacks and finding the other template file as I mentioned above. I'm still working on this.

[skinny85]

1. Regarding us calling the preparing template call ourselves rather than letting it be handled, we call it and resolve the path ourselves in constructor, the tests fail if we don't, so either those need to be fixed. Is there a specific example for where this would fail that I can use to build off of?

Fail how?

Considering the NestedStacks work the same, and their tests work fine, I think there's something wrong with the current implementation.

[skinny85]

I think _prepareTemplateAsset() might not be the correct function to override here. Look when it is invoked.

I think you might need to hook up into the synthesis step in a different way (prepare() maybe?).

[arcrank]

@skinny85 this was the simplest form I could get this into, hopefully there isn't some JSII compatibility issue with this sort of interface check.

Wasn't sure if the renaming appropriate, let me know if there is better terminology we can use.

[skinny85]

Looks great @arcrank! A few small comments, but we should be very, very close to merging this in.

Pull request has been modified.

[skinny85]

This is an amazing feature, and I think will be a game changer for ServiceCatalog usability from the CDK. Awesome work @arcrank!

[mergify]

Thank you for contributing! Your pull request will be updated from master and then merged automatically (do not update manually, and be sure to allow changes to be pushed to your fork).

[aws-cdk-automation]

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[mergify]

Thank you for contributing! Your pull request will be updated from master and then merged automatically (do not update manually, and be sure to allow changes to be pushed to your fork).

[shahbhavik01]

Can someone point me to the documentation or examples of how we can use this product stack to create Service Catalog product? We're itching to use this functionality but struggling

[skinny85]

@shahbhavik01 does this help? https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/api/latest/docs/aws-servicecatalog-readme.html#creating-a-product-from-a-stack

[shahbhavik01]

@shahbhavik01 does this help? https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/api/latest/docs/aws-servicecatalog-readme.html#creating-a-product-from-a-stack

Yes! Thank you @skinny85

[shahbhavik01]

@skinny85 @arcrank What's the correct way to reference parameters as value within the productStack? I'm trying to do something like:

        const natGateways = new cdk.CfnParameter(this, "natGateways", {
          type: "Number",
          description: "The number of Nat Gateways to attach",
        });

And then:

        const vpc = new ec2.Vpc(this, "threeTierVPC", {
          cidr: "10.0.0.0/16", 
          natGateways: natGateways.valueAsNumber,
        });

Both within the product stack.

This however doesn't create a Nat Gateway even if I pass two when deploying the product.
Can we not use any higher level constructs within the product stack? Are there other more complex examples you know of besides the s3 example that use the productStack to create a service catalog product?

[skinny85]

@shahbhavik01 can you show your entire CDK code, and the resulting template that's generated? (You will find it in the cdk.out directory)

[shahbhavik01]

@skinny85 Yes. See attached.

service_catalog_files.zip

The goal we're working on is to create a set of products under one portfolio.

Attached is the code containing the product. I have added my bin/ lib/ and cdk.out folders.

[arcrank]

Thanks, I am able to replicate. I think this partly an issue with passing in tokens to the vpc construct, as it does conditional generation of underlying resources based on that, but need to confirm this behavior.

[shahbhavik01]

@arcrank Thank you for looking into it. If I get rid of the conditional VPC resources and then create each resource individually, would this work? Does the code look ok otherwise? Is this how you intended the use of service catalog product on CDK?

[arcrank]

@shahbhavik01, putting CfnParameters in the ProductStack should and does work when it's mapping to a field in the template. The crux of issue is that it's not really a CfnParameter for the template, but rather a functional part of cdk code, that abstracts away generating part of a template. In this case I actually think the VPC construct should be checking if Token is resolvable and throwing an error. While this is not ideal, it should at least fail fast. So yes, if you for example have all of the resources added and are using a CfnParameter for a cidr mask value it will work.

You bring up a good point that we definitely want to consider going forward, as more powerful abstractions for resources will not be available to product stack, when a construct or resources represents a cdk function that can map to n underlying resources depending on the configuration. We will definitely be looking into this going forward.

[shahbhavik01]

Thank you for the detailed explanation. I will keep that in mind and develop accordingly.