NOTICE: For CLI usage, AWS CloudFormation Template Flip is now deprecated.

You should use rain instead. rain fmt can convert CloudFormation templates between JSON and YAML.

See the rain fmt documentation for details.

This deprecation notice does not affect the API in this package which may continue to be used.

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AWS CloudFormation Template Flip

About

AWS CloudFormation Template Flip is a tool that converts AWS CloudFormation templates between JSON and YAML formats, making use of the YAML format's short function syntax where possible.

The term "Flip" is inspired by the well-known Unix command-line tool flip which converts text files between Unix, Mac, and MS-DOS formats.

Installation

AWS CloudFormation Template Flip can be installed using pip:

pip install cfn-flip

Usage

AWS CloudFormation Template Flip is both a command line tool and a python library.

Note that the command line tool is spelled cfn-flip with a hyphen, while the python package is cfn_flip with an underscore.

Command line tool

Usage: cfn-flip [OPTIONS] [INPUT] [OUTPUT]

  AWS CloudFormation Template Flip is a tool that converts AWS
  CloudFormation templates between JSON and YAML formats, making use of the
  YAML format's short function syntax where possible."

Options:
  -i, --input [json|yaml]   Specify the input format. Overrides -j and -y
                            flags.
  -o, --output [json|yaml]  Specify the output format. Overrides -j, -y, and
                            -n flags.
  -j, --json                Convert to JSON. Assume the input is YAML.
  -y, --yaml                Convert to YAML. Assume the input is JSON.
  -c, --clean               Performs some opinionated cleanup on your
                            template.
  -l, --long                Use long-form syntax for functions when converting
                            to YAML.
  -n, --no-flip             Perform other operations but do not flip the
                            output format.
  --version                 Show the version and exit.
  --help                    Show this message and exit.

cfn-flip will detect the format of the input template and convert JSON to YAML and YAML to JSON, respectively.

Examples:

• Reading from stdin and outputting to stdout:

  cat examples/test.json | cfn-flip

• Reading from a file and outputting to stdout:

  cfn-flip examples/test.yaml

• Reading from a file and outputting to another file:

  cfn-flip examples/test.json output.yaml

• Reading from a file and cleaning up the output

  cfn-flip -c examples/test.json

Python package

To use AWS CloudFormation Template Flip from your own python projects, import one of the functions flip, to_yaml, or to_json as needed.

from cfn_flip import flip, to_yaml, to_json

"""
All functions expect a string containing serialised data
and return a string containing serialised data
or raise an exception if there is a problem parsing the input
"""

# flip takes a best guess at the serialisation format
# and returns the opposite, converting json into yaml and vice versa
some_yaml_or_json = flip(some_json_or_yaml)

# to_json expects serialised yaml as input, and returns serialised json
some_json = to_json(some_yaml)

# to_yaml expects serialised json as input, and returns serialised yaml
some_yaml = to_yaml(some_json)

# The clean_up flag performs some opinionated, CloudFormation-specific sanitation of the input
# For example, converting uses of Fn::Join to Fn::Sub
# flip, to_yaml, and to_json all support the clean_up flag
clean_yaml = to_yaml(some_json, clean_up=True)

Configuration paramters

You can configure some parameters like:

max_col_width: Maximum columns before breakline. Default value is 200 To change the configuration you can use:

Environment Variable

Linux/Unix: export CFN_MAX_COL_WIDTH=120

Windows: SET CFN_MAX_COL_WIDTH=120

Python

from cfn_tools._config import config
from cfn_flip import flip, to_yaml, to_json

"""
All functions expect a string containing serialised data
and return a string containing serialised data
or raise an exception if there is a problem parsing the input
"""

# Change the default number of columns to break line to 120
config['max_col_width'] = "120"

# flip takes a best guess at the serialisation format
# and returns the opposite, converting json into yaml and vice versa
some_yaml_or_json = flip(some_json_or_yaml)

# to_json expects serialised yaml as input, and returns serialised json
some_json = to_json(some_yaml)

# to_yaml expects serialised json as input, and returns serialised yaml
some_yaml = to_yaml(some_json)

# The clean_up flag performs some opinionated, CloudFormation-specific sanitation of the input
# For example, converting uses of Fn::Join to Fn::Sub
# flip, to_yaml, and to_json all support the clean_up flag
clean_yaml = to_yaml(some_json, clean_up=True)