JSPM

AWS Identity and Access Management Construct Library

Define a role and add permissions to it. This will automatically create and attach an IAM policy to the role:

attaching permissions to role

Define a policy and attach it to groups, users and roles. Note that it is possible to attach the policy either by calling xxx.attachInlinePolicy(policy) or policy.attachToXxx(xxx).

attaching policies to user and group

Managed policies can be attached using xxx.addManagedPolicy(ManagedPolicy.fromAwsManagedPolicyName(policyName)):

attaching managed policies

Granting permissions to resources

Many of the AWS CDK resources have grant* methods that allow you to grant other resources access to that resource. As an example, the following code gives a Lambda function write permissions (Put, Update, Delete) to a DynamoDB table.

const fn = new lambda.Function(...);
const table = new dynamodb.Table(...);

table.grantWriteData(fn);

The more generic grant method allows you to give specific permissions to a resource:

const fn = new lambda.Function(...);
const table = new dynamodb.Table(...);

table.grant(fn, 'dynamodb:PutItem');

The grant* methods accept an IGrantable object. This interface is implemented by IAM principlal resources (groups, users and roles) and resources that assume a role such as a Lambda function, EC2 instance or a Codebuild project.

You can find which grant* methods exist for a resource in the AWS CDK API Reference.

Configuring an ExternalId

If you need to create roles that will be assumed by 3rd parties, it is generally a good idea to require an ExternalId to assume them. Configuring an ExternalId works like this:

supplying an external ID

Principals vs Identities

When we say Principal, we mean an entity you grant permissions to. This entity can be an AWS Service, a Role, or something more abstract such as "all users in this account" or even "all users in this organization". An Identity is an IAM representing a single IAM entity that can have a policy attached, one of Role, User, or Group.

IAM Principals

When defining policy statements as part of an AssumeRole policy or as part of a resource policy, statements would usually refer to a specific IAM principal under Principal.

IAM principals are modeled as classes that derive from the iam.PolicyPrincipal abstract class. Principal objects include principal type (string) and value (array of string), optional set of conditions and the action that this principal requires when it is used in an assume role policy document.

To add a principal to a policy statement you can either use the abstract statement.addPrincipal, one of the concrete addXxxPrincipal methods:

• addAwsPrincipal, addArnPrincipal or new ArnPrincipal(arn) for { "AWS": arn }
• addAwsAccountPrincipal or new AccountPrincipal(accountId) for { "AWS": account-arn }
• addServicePrincipal or new ServicePrincipal(service) for { "Service": service }
• addAccountRootPrincipal or new AccountRootPrincipal() for { "AWS": { "Ref: "AWS::AccountId" } }
• addCanonicalUserPrincipal or new CanonicalUserPrincipal(id) for { "CanonicalUser": id }
• addFederatedPrincipal or new FederatedPrincipal(federated, conditions, assumeAction) for { "Federated": arn } and a set of optional conditions and the assume role action to use.
• addAnyPrincipal or new AnyPrincipal for { "AWS": "*" }

If multiple principals are added to the policy statement, they will be merged together:

const statement = new PolicyStatement();
statement.addServicePrincipal('cloudwatch.amazonaws.com');
statement.addServicePrincipal('ec2.amazonaws.com');
statement.addArnPrincipal('arn:aws:boom:boom');

Will result in:

{
  "Principal": {
    "Service": [ "cloudwatch.amazonaws.com", "ec2.amazonaws.com" ],
    "AWS": "arn:aws:boom:boom"
  }
}

The CompositePrincipal class can also be used to define complex principals, for example:

const role = new iam.Role(this, 'MyRole', {
  assumedBy: new iam.CompositePrincipal(
    new iam.ServicePrincipal('ec2.amazonaws.com'),
    new iam.AccountPrincipal('1818188181818187272')
  )
});

Features

• Policy name uniqueness is enforced. If two policies by the same name are attached to the same principal, the attachment will fail.
• Policy names are not required - the CDK logical ID will be used and ensured to be unique.