AWS CodePipeline Construct Library

Pipeline

To construct an empty Pipeline:

import * as codepipeline from '@aws-cdk/aws-codepipeline';

const pipeline = new codepipeline.Pipeline(this, 'MyFirstPipeline');

To give the Pipeline a nice, human-readable name:

const pipeline = new codepipeline.Pipeline(this, 'MyFirstPipeline', {
  pipelineName: 'MyPipeline',
});

Be aware that in the default configuration, the Pipeline construct creates an AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) Customer Master Key (CMK) for you to encrypt the artifacts in the artifact bucket, which incurs a cost of $1/month. This default configuration is necessary to allow cross-account actions.

If you do not intend to perform cross-account deployments, you can disable the creation of the Customer Master Keys by passing crossAccountKeys: false when defining the Pipeline:

const pipeline = new codepipeline.Pipeline(this, 'MyFirstPipeline', {
  crossAccountKeys: false,
});

Stages

You can provide Stages when creating the Pipeline:

const pipeline = new codepipeline.Pipeline(this, 'MyFirstPipeline', {
  stages: [
    {
      stageName: 'Source',
      actions: [
        // see below...
      ],
    },
  ],
});

Or append a Stage to an existing Pipeline:

const sourceStage = pipeline.addStage({
  stageName: 'Source',
  actions: [ // optional property
    // see below...
  ],
});

You can insert the new Stage at an arbitrary point in the Pipeline:

const someStage = pipeline.addStage({
  stageName: 'SomeStage',
  placement: {
    // note: you can only specify one of the below properties
    rightBefore: anotherStage,
    justAfter: anotherStage
  }
});

Actions

Actions live in a separate package, @aws-cdk/aws-codepipeline-actions.

To add an Action to a Stage, you can provide it when creating the Stage, in the actions property, or you can use the IStage.addAction() method to mutate an existing Stage:

sourceStage.addAction(someAction);

Cross-account CodePipelines

Cross-account Pipeline actions require that the Pipeline has not been created with crossAccountKeys: false.

Most pipeline Actions accept an AWS resource object to operate on. For example:

• S3DeployAction accepts an s3.IBucket.
• CodeBuildAction accepts a codebuild.IProject.
• etc.

These resources can be either newly defined (new s3.Bucket(...)) or imported (s3.Bucket.fromBucketAttributes(...)) and identify the resource that should be changed.

These resources can be in different accounts than the pipeline itself. For example, the following action deploys to an imported S3 bucket from a different account:

stage.addAction(new codepipeline_actions.S3DeployAction({
  bucket: s3.Bucket.fromBucketAttributes(this, 'Bucket', {
    account: '123456789012',
    // ...
  }),
  // ...
}));

Actions that don't accept a resource object accept an explicit account parameter:

stage.addAction(new codepipeline_actions.CloudFormationCreateUpdateStackAction({
  account: '123456789012',
  // ...
}));

The Pipeline construct automatically defines an IAM Role for you in the target account which the pipeline will assume to perform that action. This Role will be defined in a support stack named <PipelineStackName>-support-<account>, that will automatically be deployed before the stack containing the pipeline.

If you do not want to use the generated role, you can also explicitly pass a role when creating the action. In that case, the action will operate in the account the role belongs to:

stage.addAction(new codepipeline_actions.CloudFormationCreateUpdateStackAction({
  // ...
  role: iam.Role.fromRoleArn(this, 'ActionRole', '...'),
}));

Cross-region CodePipelines

Similar to how you set up a cross-account Action, the AWS resource object you pass to actions can also be in different Regions. For example, the following Action deploys to an imported S3 bucket from a different Region:

stage.addAction(new codepipeline_actions.S3DeployAction({
  bucket: s3.Bucket.fromBucketAttributes(this, 'Bucket', {
    region: 'us-west-1',
    // ...
  }),
  // ...
}));

Actions that don't take an AWS resource will accept an explicit region parameter:

stage.addAction(new codepipeline_actions.CloudFormationCreateUpdateStackAction({
  // ...
  region: 'us-west-1',
}));

The Pipeline construct automatically defines a replication bucket for you in the target region, which the pipeline will replicate artifacts to and from. This Bucket will be defined in a support stack named <PipelineStackName>-support-<region>, that will automatically be deployed before the stack containing the pipeline.

If you don't want to use these support stacks, and already have buckets in place to serve as replication buckets, you can supply these at Pipeline definition time using the crossRegionReplicationBuckets parameter. Example:

const pipeline = new codepipeline.Pipeline(this, 'MyFirstPipeline', { /* ... */ });
  // ...

  crossRegionReplicationBuckets: {
    // note that a physical name of the replication Bucket must be known at synthesis time
    'us-west-1': s3.Bucket.fromBucketAttributes(this, 'UsWest1ReplicationBucket', {
      bucketName: 'my-us-west-1-replication-bucket',
      // optional KMS key
      encryptionKey: kms.Key.fromKeyArn(this, 'UsWest1ReplicationKey',
        'arn:aws:kms:us-west-1:123456789012:key/1234-5678-9012'
      ),
    }),
  },
});

See the AWS docs here for more information on cross-region CodePipelines.

Creating an encrypted replication bucket

If you're passing a replication bucket created in a different stack, like this:

const replicationStack = new Stack(app, 'ReplicationStack', {
  env: {
    region: 'us-west-1',
  },
});
const key = new kms.Key(replicationStack, 'ReplicationKey');
const replicationBucket = new s3.Bucket(replicationStack, 'ReplicationBucket', {
  // like was said above - replication buckets need a set physical name
  bucketName: PhysicalName.GENERATE_IF_NEEDED,
  encryptionKey: key, // does not work!
});

// later...
new codepipeline.Pipeline(pipelineStack, 'Pipeline', {
  crossRegionReplicationBuckets: {
    'us-west-1': replicationBucket,
  },
});

When trying to encrypt it (and note that if any of the cross-region actions happen to be cross-account as well, the bucket has to be encrypted - otherwise the pipeline will fail at runtime), you cannot use a key directly - KMS keys don't have physical names, and so you can't reference them across environments.

In this case, you need to use an alias in place of the key when creating the bucket:

const key = new kms.Key(replicationStack, 'ReplicationKey');
const alias = new kms.Alias(replicationStack, 'ReplicationAlias', {
  // aliasName is required
  aliasName: PhysicalName.GENERATE_IF_NEEDED,
  targetKey: key,
});
const replicationBucket = new s3.Bucket(replicationStack, 'ReplicationBucket', {
  bucketName: PhysicalName.GENERATE_IF_NEEDED,
  encryptionKey: alias,
});

Variables

The library supports the CodePipeline Variables feature. Each action class that emits variables has a separate variables interface, accessed as a property of the action instance called variables. You instantiate the action class and assign it to a local variable; when you want to use a variable in the configuration of a different action, you access the appropriate property of the interface returned from variables, which represents a single variable. Example:

// MyAction is some action type that produces variables
const myAction = new MyAction({
  // ...
});
new OtherAction({
  // ...
  config: myAction.variables.myVariable,
});

The namespace name that will be used will be automatically generated by the pipeline construct, based on the stage and action name; you can pass a custom name when creating the action instance:

const myAction = new MyAction({
  // ...
  variablesNamespace: 'MyNamespace',
});

There are also global variables available, not tied to any action; these are accessed through static properties of the GlobalVariables class:

new OtherAction({
  // ...
  config: codepipeline.GlobalVariables.executionId,
});

Check the documentation of the @aws-cdk/aws-codepipeline-actions for details on how to use the variables for each action class.

See the CodePipeline documentation for more details on how to use the variables feature.

Events

Using a pipeline as an event target

A pipeline can be used as a target for a CloudWatch event rule:

import * as targets from '@aws-cdk/aws-events-targets';
import * as events from '@aws-cdk/aws-events';

// kick off the pipeline every day
const rule = new events.Rule(this, 'Daily', {
  schedule: events.Schedule.rate(Duration.days(1)),
});

rule.addTarget(new targets.CodePipeline(pipeline));

When a pipeline is used as an event target, the "codepipeline:StartPipelineExecution" permission is granted to the AWS CloudWatch Events service.

Event sources

Pipelines emit CloudWatch events. To define event rules for events emitted by the pipeline, stages or action, use the onXxx methods on the respective construct:

myPipeline.onStateChange('MyPipelineStateChange', target);
myStage.onStateChange('MyStageStateChange', target);
myAction.onStateChange('MyActionStateChange', target);