Deploy a container to AWS in 5 lines of code

How easy is it to deploy your code to AWS? It’s as simple as 5 lines of code to have a completely hosted publicly available website.

For those that want to get down to the nitty-gritty quickly, the code is all available in GitHub.

I wanted to see how CDK would handle deploying an AppRunner website, and it turns out, it’s easy as pie 🥧🍕.

Make sure you have cdk installed locally: npm install -g aws-cdk then run the following:

mkdir cdk-app-runner && cd cdk-app-runner && cdk init --language typescript

Then edit lib/cdk-app-runner-stack.ts and add the following:

Import code

import * as apprunner from '@aws-cdk/aws-apprunner-alpha';

Drop this under //The code that defines your stack goes here

   const service = new apprunner.Service(this, 'Service', {
      source: apprunner.Source.fromEcrPublic({
        imageConfiguration: { port: 8000 },
        imageIdentifier: 'public.ecr.aws/aws-containers/hello-app-runner:latest',
      }),
    });

This code pulls a hello world app from ECR public. I guess it’s technically 7 lines of code with the import, but that’s mainly for readability. Ok, 8 if you include the bash commands, but that’s a bit pedantic, wouldn’t you say?

Now run the following in your terminal:

• npm i @aws-cdk/aws-apprunner-alpha
• cdk bootstrap to bootstrap your AWS account with needed CDK resources
• cdk diff to see the diff between local vs remote.
• If all looks good, run cdk deploy and you are done!

But wait, I also want to know the AppRunner URL after it deploys. I know it is severely painful to go hunt through the AWS console to find it.

Have no fear, just a few more lines of code. Append this under your other code:

    new cdk.CfnOutput(this, 'apprunner-url', {
      value: service.serviceUrl,
      description: 'App Runner URL',
      exportName: 'apprunner-url',
    });

It will spit the URL out in your terminal after you run cdk diff and cdk deploy again.

CdkAppRunnerStack: creating CloudFormation changeset...

 ✅  CdkAppRunnerStack

✨  Deployment time: 22.26s

Outputs:
CdkAppRunnerStack.apprunnerurl = vsdncfcxyz.us-east-1.awsapprunner.com
Stack ARN:
arn:aws:cloudformation:us-east-1:8675309:stack/CdkAppRunnerStack/7f2d5a70-9dcb-11ed-a83d-122e155993f5

To clean up everything, run cdk destroy and you’re done.

Take that Kubernetes!!!

Here is another resource for doing something similar: https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/guides/deploy-webapp-apprunner/module-one/