🧋 Backstage AWS CloudFormation Plugin 🧋

Backstage plugin which pulls entities from AWS CloudFormation stacks metadata.

Features

• Pull arbitrary number of Backstage entities from CloudFormation stack's Metadata
• Scan whole CloudFormation region
• Use multiple AWS profiles/accounts
• Use variables inside the entities - reference CloudFormation Stack Outputs or Region

Setup

1. Setup AWS profile credentials on your machine

# ~/.aws/credentials
[myProfile]
aws_access_key_id=AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE
aws_secret_access_key=wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY

Learn more in AWS documentation here.

2. Add Backstage notation to your CloudFormation template's Metadata section

Make sure to put the notation to correct path: Metadata.Backstage.Entities.

AWSTemplateFormatVersion: 2010-09-09
Resources:
  MyLambdaFunction:
    Type: 'AWS::Lambda::Function'
    Properties:
      FunctionName: my-lambda
Metadata:
  Backstage:
    Entities:
      - apiVersion: backstage.io/v1alpha1
        kind: Component
        metadata:
          name: petstore
          namespace: external-systems
          description: Petstore
        spec:
          type: service
          lifecycle: experimental
          owner: 'group:pet-managers'
          providesApis:
            - petstore
            - internal/streetlights
            - hello-world
      - apiVersion: backstage.io/v1alpha1
        kind: API
        metadata:
          name: petstore
          description: The Petstore API
        spec:
          type: openapi
          lifecycle: production
          owner: [email protected]
          definition:
            $text: 'https://petstore.swagger.io/v2/swagger.json'

3. If you have a standalone app (you didn't clone this repo), then do

# From your Backstage root directory
$ cd packages/backend
$ yarn add backstage-aws-cloudformation-plugin

4. Add the CloudFormationRegionProcessor and CloudFormationStackProcessor processors your catalog builder

// In packages/backend/src/plugins/catalog.ts
+import {
+	CloudFormationRegionProcessor,
+	CloudFormationStackProcessor,
+} from 'backstage-aws-cloudformation-plugin';

export default async function createPlugin(
	env: PluginEnvironment,
): Promise<Router> {
	const builder = await CatalogBuilder.create(env);

+	builder.addProcessor(new CloudFormationStackProcessor(env.config));
+	builder.addProcessor(new CloudFormationRegionProcessor(env.config));

	const {
		entitiesCatalog,
		locationsCatalog,
		locationService,
		processingEngine,
		locationAnalyzer,
	} = await builder.build();

5. Run Backstage with AWS_SDK_LOAD_CONFIG

In order for AWS SDK inside the plugin to work with AWS profile configuration in ~/.aws/config, make sure to start backstage with AWS_SDK_LOAD_CONFIG=true environment variable.

...
"scripts": {
  "dev": "AWS_SDK_LOAD_CONFIG=true concurrently \"yarn start\" \"yarn start-backend\"",
  "start": "AWS_SDK_LOAD_CONFIG=true yarn workspace app start",
  "start-backend": "AWS_SDK_LOAD_CONFIG=true yarn workspace backend start",
...

6. Optionaly add default profile configuration

# In app-config.yaml
integrations:
  aws:
    profile: purple-technology

7. Add Locations

# In app-config.yaml
catalog:
  locations:
    # Pull single stack from the profile "myProfile"
    - type: aws:cloudformation:stack
      target: myProfile@arn:aws:cloudformation:ap-southeast-1:123456789000:stack/some-stack/123-345-12-1235-123123
    # Pull single stack from the default profile
    - type: aws:cloudformation:stack
      target: arn:aws:cloudformation:eu-central-1:123456789000:stack/other-stack/532-123-59-593-19481
    # Pull whole region from the "myProfile" profile
    - type: aws:cloudformation:region
      target: myProfile@ap-southeast-1
    # Pull whole region from the default profile
    - type: aws:cloudformation:region
      target: eu-central-1

Location types

aws:cloudformation:stack

Accepts as a target ARN of the CloudFormation stack and optionally also name of the profile separated by @.

[profileName@]stack_arn

aws:cloudformation:region

Accepts as a target ID of the AWS region and optionally also name of the profile separated by @.

[profileName@]region-name-1

Variables

Since it's not possible to use intrinsic functions (Ref, Fn::GetAtt, etc.) inside Metadata, we've solved it via custom variables syntax.

When the entities are loaded from the Metadata, any variables inside are processed and replaced with appropriate values - if found.

Escaping

You can escape the variable expression via \.

For example this variable won't get replaced:

\${Outputs.SomeVariable}

Overview

Type	Example Input	Example Output	Description
Region	description: "Service in ${Region} region"	description: "Service in eu-central-1 region"	Provides region of the stack.
AccountId	title: AWS Account ID is ${AccountId}	title: AWS Account ID is 123456789000	Provides ID of the AWS account.
StackId	title: Stack ARN is ${StackId}	title: Stack ARN is arn:aws:cloudformation:ap-southeast-1:123456789000:stack/some-stack/123-345-12-1235-123123	Provides stack ID (ARN).
StackName	title: Stack Name is ${StackName}	title: Stack Name is some-stack	Provides stack name.
Outputs	name: "lambda-${Outputs.GetClientsLambdaName}"	name: "lambda-get-clients-prod"	Provides Output value from the stack.

Limitations

• The plugin has built-in mechanism for dealing with throttling, but in case of indexing a whole region be careful with the number of stacks in the region