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README

# Rain

* Documentation: <https://aws-cloudformation.github.io/rain/>

> Rain is what happens when you have a lot of CloudFormation

Rain is also a command line tool for working with [AWS CloudFormation](https://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/) templates and stacks.

[![Make it Rain](./docs/rain.svg)](https://asciinema.org/a/vtbAXkriC0zg0T2UzP0t63G4S?autoplay=1)

Key features:

* **Interactive deployments**: With `rain deploy`, rain packages your CloudFormation templates using [`aws cloudformation package`](https://awscli.amazonaws.com/v2/documentation/api/latest/reference/cloudformation/package.html), prompts you for any parameters that have not yet been defined, shows you a summary of the changes that will be made, and then displays real-time updates as your stack is being deployed. Once finished, you get a summary of the outcome along with any error messages collected along the way - including errors messages for stacks that have been rolled back and no longer exist.

* **Consistent formatting of CloudFormation templates**: Using `rain fmt`, you can format your CloudFormation templates to a consistent standard or reformat a template from JSON to YAML (or YAML to JSON if you prefer). Rain preserves your comments when using YAML and switches use of [intrinsic functions](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/intrinsic-function-reference.html) to use the short syntax where possible.

* **Combined logs for nested stacks with sensible filtering**: When you run `rain log`, you will see a combined stream of logs from the stack you specified along with any nested stack associated with it. Rain also filters out uninteresting log messages by default so you just see the errors that require attention.

* **Build new CloudFormation templates**: `rain build` generates new CloudFormation templates containing skeleton resources that you specify. This saves you having to look up which properties are available and which are required vs. optional.

## Getting started

If you have [homebrew](https://brew.sh/) installed, `brew install rain`

Or you can download the appropriate binary for your system from [the releases page](https://github.com/aws-cloudformation/rain/releases).

Or if you're a [Gopher](https://blog.golang.org/gopher), you can `GO111MODULE=on go get github.com/aws-cloudformation/rain/cmd/rain`

```
{{.Usage}}```

You can find shell completion scripts in [docs/bash_completion.sh](./docs/bash_completion.sh) and [docs/zsh_completion.sh](./docs/zsh_completion.sh).

## Contributing

Rain is written in [Go](https://golang.org/) and uses the [AWS SDK for Go v2](https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-go-v2).

To contribute a change to Rain, just [fork this repository](https://github.com/aws-cloudformation/rain/fork), make your changes, and submit a Pull Request.

## License

Rain is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. 

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## Other CloudFormation tools

In alphabetical order:

* [cfn-flip](https://github.com/awslabs/aws-cfn-template-flip)

    cfn-flip converts AWS CloudFormation templates between JSON and YAML formats, making use of the YAML format's short function syntax where possible.

* [cfn-format](https://github.com/awslabs/aws-cloudformation-template-formatter)

    cfn-format reads in an existing AWS CloudFormation template and outputs a cleanly-formatted, easy-to-read copy of the same template adhering to standards as used in AWS documentation. cfn-format can output either YAML or JSON as desired.

* [cfn-lint](https://github.com/aws-cloudformation/cfn-python-lint)

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

* [cfn-nag](https://github.com/stelligent/cfn_nag)

    The cfn-nag tool looks for patterns in CloudFormation templates that may indicate insecure infrastructure.

* [cfn-skeleton](https://github.com/awslabs/aws-cloudformation-template-builder)

    cfn-skeleton that consumes the published CloudFormation specification and generates skeleton CloudFormation templates with mandatory and optional parameters of chosen resource types pre-filled with placeholder values.

* [sceptre](https://sceptre.cloudreach.com/)

    Sceptre is a tool to drive CloudFormation. Sceptre manages the creation, update and deletion of stacks while providing meta commands which allow users to retrieve information about their stacks.

* [taskcat](https://github.com/aws-quickstart/taskcat)

    taskcat is a tool that tests AWS CloudFormation templates. It deploys your AWS CloudFormation template in multiple AWS Regions and generates a report with a pass/fail grade for each region. You can specify the regions and number of Availability Zones you want to include in the test, and pass in parameter values from your AWS CloudFormation template. taskcat is implemented as a Python class that you import, instantiate, and run.

Are we missing an excellent tool? Let us know via a GitHub issue.