Aws-sam-cli: sam deploy should accept parameter file just like aws cloudformation *-stack

[rudpot]

Description:

I would like to store configuration is version control and make deployment steps immutable. Instead of changing parameter overrides on the command line I would like to provide template parameters from a file.

There is an idiom for this in aws cloudformation create-stack --parameters file://.

Steps to reproduce the issue:

1. sam deploy --parameter-overrides file://params.json

Observed result:

Error: Invalid value for '--parameter-overrides':  file://params.json is not in valid format. It must look something like 'ParameterKey=KeyPairName,ParameterValue=MyKey ParameterKey=InstanceType,ParameterValue=t1.micro' or 'KeyPairName=MyKey InstanceType=t1.micro'

Expected result:

    Deploying with following values
    ===============================
    Stack name                 : ...
    Region                     : ...
    Confirm changeset          : ...
    Deployment s3 bucket       : ...
    Capabilities               : ...
    Parameter overrides        : {'MyParamOverride': 'MyParamValue'}

[jfuss]

Why not use the samconfig.toml file? https://docs.aws.amazon.com/serverless-application-model/latest/developerguide/serverless-sam-cli-config.html

[rudpot]

Why not use the samconfig.toml file? https://docs.aws.amazon.com/serverless-application-model/latest/developerguide/serverless-sam-cli-config.html

I am trying to set a parameter that is specified in the template. There is no hint in the documentation that this should be possible but following your suggestion it tried the following:

Parameter defined in the template:

Parameters:
  AllowedSrcIp:
    Type: "String"
    Description: "IP address of the client used for testing. If in doubt, deploy the code and the output will guide you"
    Default: "192.168.0.1"

Updated samconfig.toml with the parameters directly:

version = 0.1
[default]
[default.deploy]
[default.deploy.parameters]
stack_name = "api-unsecured-sam"
s3_bucket = "aws-sam-cli-managed-default-samclisourcebucket-10ziytzq60hp8"
s3_prefix = "api-unsecured-sam"
region = "us-west-2"
confirm_changeset = false
capabilities = "CAPABILITY_IAM"
AllowedSrcIp = "205.251.233.178"

The deploy works but doesn't honor the new parameter. Looking at the structure of the config I also tried this line:

parameter_overrides = ParameterKey=AllowedSrcIp,ParameterValue=205.251.233.178

Which breaks the deployment entirely:

sam deploy
Usage: sam deploy [OPTIONS]
Try 'sam deploy --help' for help.

Error: Missing option '--stack-name', 'sam deploy --guided' can be used to provide and save needed parameters for future deploys.

And this:

parameter_overrides = "ParameterKey=AllowedSrcIp,ParameterValue=205.251.233.178"

And this:

parameter_overrides = "AllowedSrcIp=205.251.233.178"

both of which do work but are really hard to maintain if you have more than a couple parameters or if your parameters need complex quoting. In fact it turns out that if you were to enter the data interactively as a result of using sam deploy --guided it will create something like this which highlights the issue:

parameter_overrides = "VpcIdParameter=\"vpc-0000111122223333\" VpcAllowedSecurityGroupIdParameter=\"sg-0000111122223333\" VpcEndpointSubnetIdsParameter=\"subnet-0000111122223333 \""

[what-name]

As @rudpot mentioned, the following parameter_overrides value is rather tedious to maintain with more than a couple entries:

parameter_overrides = "VpcIdParameter=\"vpc-0000111122223333\" VpcAllowedSecurityGroupIdParameter=\"sg-0000111122223333\" VpcEndpointSubnetIdsParameter=\"subnet-0000111122223333 \""

+1 for a simpler approach.

[rojomisin]

work around until a file can be used is to wrap w/ shell or make

...
        --parameter-overrides \
            DBUsername=$(DBUSER) \
            DBPassword=\"$(shell get-db-pass)\" \
            Subnets=$(SUBNETS) \
            VpcId=$(VPC_ID)

load up a config file with k/v pairs and use make's include

ifndef CONFIG
include config/$(CONFIG)
endif

make sam-deploy CONFIG=dev

[jveldboom]

We use a similar pattern to @rojomisin but use a standard environment variable file format.

.sam-params

DBUsername=admin
DBPassword=password123
Subnets=subnet-12345
VpcId=vpc-1234

Then in our Makefile, we cat that file and pass them in as --parameter-overrides

sam deploy --parameter-overrides $(shell cat .sam-params)

[jaridspokes]

I've used the above workaround for now, but it would be great to get some consistency with cloudformation in this regard.

[benkehoe]

2253 proposes parameter overrides should get their own section in samconfig.toml (and should be individually overridden by --parameter-overrides)

[jjg-dressipi]

The trick by @jveldboom works just as well in a shell-script, except with --parameter-overrides $(cat path-to-file).