CoffeeCloud allows you to write AWS CloudFormation templates with Coffeescript.

Why would I want to do that?

• CoffeeScript syntax for objects is less likely to melt your brain.
• Multiple source files that build to one template means you can organise subsystems in directories, and easily reuse common components.
• You can use dynamic templates, for a single AWS topology with multiple environments (DEV, UAT, PROD) where the config changes depending on environment.
• You get to do comments. Just do # <comment_text>, well, anywhere you like.

Requires nodejs and coffee-script.

apt-get install nodejs
npm install -g coffee-script
npm install && npm link

brew install nodejs
npm install -g coffee-script
npm install && npm link

coffee-script is used as a macro language to build environment templates. CD to the directory where your project is, and run:

  cd <projectdir>/
  coffeecloud

Each .coffee file in the enviroments directory represents an environment, except files which start with an underscore _. Each file represents one environment e.g. environments/test.coffee:

module.exports = 
  Name: 'Test DEV'
  Description: 'Test CloudFormation Template for DEV Environment, AWS ap-southeast-2'

  VPCCIDR: '10.0.0.0/16'

  AvailibilityZones:  [ 'ap-southeast-2a',  'ap-southeast-2b' ]

  WebCIDR:        [ '10.0.1.0/24',  '10.0.2.0/24' ]
  DataCIDR:       [ '10.0.20.0/24', '10.0.21.0/24' ]

An environment module must declare the Name property in order to be processed.

One CloudFormation <envname>.template will be build for each environment.

All files in /enviroments which start with an underscore are assumed to be common files, and are merged into a single environment object which is included in all other environments. You can define common CIDR/IP ranges, Ports or AMI IDs for all environments, e.g. environments/_common.coffee:

module.exports = 

  # Internet Range
  
  InternetCIDR:       '0.0.0.0/0'
  
  # Ports

  Ports:
    SSH: 22
    MySQL: 3306

Anything in these files will be available in all environments. Individual environment files can however override these values by redeclaring them.

Each .coffee file in the cloudformation directory and its subdirectories represents a part of the CloudFormation template. All files are loaded in an arbitary order, CloudFormation(env, helpers) is called on each module, and the results merged into the environment template, e.g cloudformation/vpc/vpc.coffee:

module.exports =
  Name: "VPC"
  CloudFormation: (params) ->
    Resources:

      # The Environment VPC.
      
      TestVPC:
        Type: 'AWS::EC2::VPC'
        Properties:
          CidrBlock:          params.VPCCIDR
          EnableDnsSupport:   true
          EnableDnsHostnames: true
          InstanceTenancy:    'default'
          Tags: [ { Key: 'Name', Value: 'Test VPC' } ]

A Name property can also be defined on the module, which is used only for the logging output of the compiler.

Each .coffee file in the helpers directory and its subdirectories represents part of the helpers object supplied to each CloudFormation(env, helpers) call. Here you can define helper functions.

Multiple helpers can be defined in each file.

• Convert AWS example snippets and existing AWS Cloudformation templates into Coffeescript using the excellent js2.coffee.

Contributions, critique, bug notices and fixes are very welcome. Please use github issues / fork and submit a PR.

The CoffeeCloud project is committed to the Contributor Covenant. Please read CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md before making any contributions or comments.