CloudFormation Linter

Validate CloudFormation yaml/json templates against the CloudFormation spec and additional checks. Includes checking valid values for resource properties and best practices.

Warning

This is an attempt to provide validation for CloudFormation templates properties and their values. For values things can get pretty complicated (mappings, joins, splits, conditions, and nesting those functions inside each other) so its a best effort to validate those values but the promise is to not fail if we can't understand or translate all the things that could be going on.

Serverless Application Model

The Serverless Application Model (SAM) is supported by the linter. The template is transformed using AWS SAM https://github.com/awslabs/serverless-application-model before the linter processes the template.

To get information about the SAM Transformation, run the linter with --info

Install

Python 2.7+ and 3.4+ are supported.

Pip Install

pip install cfn-lint. If pip is not available, run python setup.py clean --all then python setup.py install.

Homebrew (macOS)

brew install cfn-lint

Editor Plugins

There are IDE plugins available to get direct linter feedback from you favorite editor:

GitHub Actions

There is a GitHub Actions action available to get linter feedback in workflows:

cfn-lint-action

Basic Usage

cfn-lint template.yaml
cfn-lint -t template.yaml

Lint multiple files

Multiple files can be linted by either specifying multiple specific files:

cfn-lint template1.yaml template2.yaml
cfn-lint -t template1.yaml template2.yaml

Multiple files can also be specified using wildcards (globbing):

Lint all yaml files in path:

cfn-lint path/*.yaml

Lint all yaml files in path and all subdirectories (recursive):

cfn-lint path/to/templates/**/*.yaml

Note: Glob in Python 3.5 supports recursive searching **/*.yaml. If you are using an earlier version of Python you will have to handle this manually (folder1/*.yaml, folder2/*.yaml, etc).

Specifying the template as an input stream

The template to be linted can also be passed using standard input:

cat path/template.yaml | cfn-lint -

Specifying the template with other parameters

cfn-lint -r us-east-1 ap-south-1 -- template.yaml
cfn-lint -r us-east-1 ap-south-1 -t template.yaml

Configuration

Command Line

From a command prompt run cfn-lint <path to yaml template> to run standard linting of the template.

Config File

You can define a yaml file in your project or home folder called .cfnlintrc. In that file you can specify settings from the parameter section below.

Example:

templates:
- test/fixtures/templates/good/**/*.yaml
ignore_templates:
- codebuild.yaml
include_checks:
- I

Parameters

Optional parameters:

Command Line	Metadata	Options	Description
-h, --help			Get description of cfn-lint
-t, --template		filename	Alternative way to specify Template file path to the file that needs to be tested by cfn-lint
-f, --format	format	quiet, parseable, json	Output format
-l, --list-rules			List all the rules
-r, --regions	regions	[REGIONS [REGIONS ...]], ALL_REGIONS	Test the template against many regions. Supported regions
-b, --ignore-bad-template	ignore_bad_template		Ignores bad template errors
--ignore-templates	IGNORE_TEMPLATES [IGNORE_TEMPLATES ...]	Ignore templates from being scanned
-a, --append-rules	append_rules	[RULESPATH [RULESPATH ...]]	Specify one or more rules paths using one or more --append-rules arguments. Each path can be either a directory containing python files, or an import path to a module.
-i, --ignore-checks	ignore_checks	[IGNORE_CHECKS [IGNORE_CHECKS ...]]	Only check rules whose ID do not match or prefix these values. Examples: - A value of `W` will disable all warnings - `W2` disables all Warnings for Parameter rules. - `W2001` will disable rule `W2001`
-e, --include-experimental	include_experimental		Whether rules that still in an experimental state should be included in the checks
-c, --include-checks	INCLUDE_CHECKS [INCLUDE_CHECKS ...]	Include rules whose id match these values
-m, --mandatory-checks			Rules to check regardless of ignore configuration
-x, --configure-rule	CONFIGURE_RULES [CONFIGURE_RULES ...]	Provide configuration for a rule. Format RuleId:key=value. Example: E3012:strict=false
-D, --debug			Specify to enable debug logging. Debug logging outputs detailed information about rules processing, useful for debugging rules.
-I, --info			Specify to enable logging. Outputs additional information about the template processing.
-u, --update-specs			Update the CloudFormation Specs. You may need sudo to run this. You will need internet access when running this command
-o, --override-spec		filename	Spec-style file containing custom definitions. Can be used to override CloudFormation specifications. More info here
-v, --version			Version of cfn-lint

Info Rules

To maintain backwards compatibility info rules are not included by default. To include these rules you will need to include -c I or --include-checks I

Metadata

Template Based Metadata

Inside the root level Metadata key you can configure cfn-lint using the supported parameters.

Metadata:
  cfn-lint:
    config:
      regions:
      - us-east-1
      - us-east-2
      ignore_checks:
      - E2530

Resource Based Metadata

Inside a resources Metadata key you can configure cfn-lint to ignore checks. This will filter out failures for the resource in which the Metadata belongs. Keep in mind that resources may lose metadata when passed through aws-sam-translator, such as AWS::Serverless::Function resources.

Resources:
  myInstance:
    Type: AWS::EC2::Instance
    Metadata:
      cfn-lint:
        config:
          ignore_checks:
          - E3030
    Properties:
      InstanceType: nt.x4superlarge
      ImageId: ami-abc1234

Precedence

cfn-lint applies configurations from several sources. The rules at lower levels are overrided by those at higher levels.

.cfnlintrc configurations
Template Metadata configurations
CLI parameters

Configure Rules

Certain rules support configuration properties. You can configure these rules by using configure_rules parameter.

From the command line the format is RuleId:key=value, for example: E3012:strict=false. From the cfnlintrc or Metadata section the format is

Metadata:
  cfn-lint:
    config:
      configure_rules:
        RuleId:
          key: value

The configurable rules have a non-empty Config entry in the table here.

Getting Started Guides

There are getting started guides available in the documentation section to help with integrating cfn-lint or creating rules.

Rules

This linter checks the CloudFormation by processing a collection of Rules, where every rules handles a specific function check or validation of the template.

This collection of rules can be extended with custom rules using the --append-rules argument.

More information describing how rules are set up and an overview of all the Rules that are applied by this linter are documented here

Customize specifications

The linter follows the CloudFormation specifications by default. However, for your use case specific requirements might exist. For example, within your organisation it might be mandatory to use Tagging.

The linter provides the possibility to implement these customized specifications using the --override-spec argument.

More information about how this feature works is documented here

pre-commit

If you'd like cfn-lint to be run automatically when making changes to files in your Git repository, you can install pre-commit and add the following text to your repositories' .pre-commit-config.yaml:

repos:
-   repo: https://github.com/aws-cloudformation/cfn-python-lint
    rev: v0.28.1  # The version of cfn-lint to use
    hooks:
    -   id: cfn-python-lint
        files: path/to/cfn/dir/.*\.(json|yml|yaml)$

If you exclude the files: line above, every json/yml/yaml file will be checked.
You can see available cfn-lint versions on the releases page.

obobrova/cfn-python-lint