CloudFormation Tools

AWS CloudFormation tools let you inspect, validate, and monitor infrastructure-as-code stacks directly from a workflow. Use these tools when you need to query stack status, audit deployed resources, detect configuration drift, retrieve templates, or validate new templates before deployment.

Overview

Operations

Configuration

cloudformation_describe_stacks

cloudformation_list_stack_resources

cloudformation_describe_stack_events

cloudformation_detect_stack_drift

cloudformation_get_template

cloudformation_validate_template

Outputs

cloudformation_describe_stacks

• stacks (array) — List of CloudFormation stack objects, each containing stack metadata such as name, status, creation time, parameters, outputs, and tags.

cloudformation_list_stack_resources

• resources (array) — List of resource summary objects for every resource in the stack, including logical ID, physical ID, resource type, and resource status.

cloudformation_describe_stack_events

• events (array) — List of stack event objects in reverse chronological order, each containing the event ID, stack name, logical/physical resource IDs, resource type, timestamp, and resource status.

cloudformation_detect_stack_drift

• stackDriftDetectionId (string) — The detection operation ID. Use this ID with the AWS SDK or another CloudFormation call to poll for the detection result once the asynchronous operation completes.

cloudformation_get_template

• templateBody (string) — The template body as a JSON or YAML string.
• stagesAvailable (array) — List of template stages available (e.g., Original, Processed).

cloudformation_validate_template

• description (string) — The description declared in the template.
• parameters (array) — List of template parameter declarations found in the template.
• capabilities (array) — List of capabilities the template requires (e.g., CAPABILITY_IAM, CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM).

YAML Example

cloudformation_1:
  type: cloudformation
  name: "CloudFormation"
  inputs:
    operation: "cloudformation_describe_stacks"
    awsRegion: "us-east-1"
    awsAccessKeyId: "{{AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID}}"
    awsSecretAccessKey: "{{AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}}"
    stackName: "my-production-stack"
  connections:
    outgoing:
      - target: next-block-id

Tips

• Store awsAccessKeyId and awsSecretAccessKey as environment variables (e.g., {{AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID}} and {{AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}}) and reference them from the block inputs rather than hardcoding credentials in the workflow.
• cloudformation_detect_stack_drift is an asynchronous operation — it returns a stackDriftDetectionId immediately, but the actual drift results are not available until AWS completes detection (typically seconds to minutes). Chain a wait block or a polling loop before consuming drift results.
• When using cloudformation_describe_stacks without a stackName, the response includes all stacks in the region. Use a downstream block to filter by status (e.g., CREATE_COMPLETE, UPDATE_COMPLETE) when you only care about active stacks.