CloudFormation: Conditional List Items

AWS CloudFormation

Hello!

Many CloudFormation resources take parameters whose values are lists. Like tags on a Load Balancer:

Lb:
  Type: AWS::ElasticLoadBalancingV2::LoadBalancer
  Properties:
    Name: MyLb
    Scheme: internal
    Subnets: !Ref Subnets
    Tags:
      - Key: TagA
        Value: Unconditionally present

I often find that I want to add an item to the list, but only if a condition is true. That’s possible, but the syntax is a little funky.

In addition to conditions, we need AWS::NoValue. It’s a CloudFormation “Pseudo Parameter” that removes properties from templates. It allows you to dynamically include or remove properties based on conditions; you can pass AWS::NoValue to either the true or false case of the condition and it’s as if you never wrote that property into the template. The docs demonstrate it for top-level properties like Name and Scheme, but it also works for list items:

Conditions:
  AlwaysTrue: !Equals [true, true]
  AlwaysFalse: !Equals [true, false]

Resources:
  Lb:
    Type: AWS::ElasticLoadBalancingV2::LoadBalancer
    Properties:
      Name: MyLb
      Scheme: internal
      Subnets: !Ref Subnets
      Tags:
        - Key: TagA
          Value: Unconditionally present
        - !If
          - AlwaysTrue
          - Key: TagB
            Value: Always present
          - !Ref 'AWS::NoValue'
        - !If
          - AlwaysFalse
          - Key: TagC
            Value: Never present
          - !Ref 'AWS::NoValue'

These conditions (which of course are hacks just to make the demo easy) will only create TagA and TagB:

ConditionalTags

That’s it!

Before we wrap up, though, it’s worth highlighting a detail. There are two list here, the list of tags and the list of arguments to the !If function:

- !If
  - AlwaysFalse
  - Key: TagC
    Value: Never present
  - !Ref 'AWS::NoValue'

The second element of the arguments list (line 3) is a map that will become the value of an element of the tags list (line 1). In long templates with complicated conditions I find this detail turns in to a tripping point. If you’re getting errors, make sure your indentation is clean and you’re not mixing up the two lists.

Happy automating!

Adam

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