documentation on how to synth, diff, and deploy from java without CLI

[dsilvasc]

It would be nice to have documentation on the readme or elsewhere on how to synth, diff, and deploy stacks with library calls instead of the cdk cli. This is helpful when you're running from an IDE -- especially for debugging. It's also helpful for embedding synthesis and deployment in other processes.

For example, this seems to synthesize a template from scala:

object Demo extends App {
  val cdkApp = new software.amazon.awscdk.App
  val props = StackProps.builder
    .withEnv(
      Environment.builder
        .withRegion("us-east-1")
        .build)
    .build
  val stack = MyStack(cdkApp, "stack-name", props)
  val output = cdkApp.synthesizeStack(stack.getName)
  val template = output.getTemplate.asInstanceOf[java.util.Map[String, Object]]
  println(javaMapToYAML(template)) 
}

It would be helpful to have a page like https://awslabs.github.io/aws-cdk/tools.html but for the library, describing cdkApp.synthesizeStack and friends.

[thesurlydev]

I keep coming back to this issue hoping it gets traction. This seems like it would be a huge benefit from the standpoint of using CDK for standing up and tearing down infrastructure for tests in any JVM language.

Is the current pattern to possibly use CDK to generate the template then use SDK to deploy, etc.?

[rix0rrr]

Yes, that is it.

There is something you could do; for example, you can call .toCloudFormation() on your stack, which nets you part of the template, but the more advanced features like assets won't work in that scenario. At the moment, you have to use the CDK toolkit to interact with your CDK app.

[rix0rrr]

Also a duplicate of https://github.com/awslabs/aws-cdk/issues/601, so closing this.

[rix0rrr]

Please upvote the linked issue.

[geek29]

I have discovered that calling synth() on App from Java generates cloud assembly in the temp folder whereas using cdk commands gets that temp folder content into ./cdk.out directory. If you are looking for template file string you can go through /tmp/cdk.outxxxxxx location.

[eladb]

You can also specify outdir when you create the App instance.