How to set Region and Account for a CDK Deployment

Setting Region and Account for a CDK Deployment #

In order to set the account and region of a CDK deployment we have to explicitly set the env property when instantiating the stack.

const app = new cdk.App();

new MyCdkStack(app, `my-cdk-stack`, {
  stackName: `my-cdk-stack`,
  // 👇 Explicitly set env property
  env: {
    region: 'us-east-1',
    account: 123456789,
  },
});

We can set the values of region and account using explicitly set by us environment variables, secrets, parameters, etc.

An alternative approach would be to use environment variables that are already pre-set in the CDK environment:

const app = new cdk.App();

new MyCdkStack(app, `my-cdk-stack`, {
  stackName: `my-cdk-stack`,
  env: {
    region: process.env.CDK_DEFAULT_REGION,
    account: process.env.CDK_DEFAULT_ACCOUNT,
  },
});

The CDK_DEFAULT_REGION and CDK_DEFAULT_ACCOUNT environment variables get resolved based on the --profile flag we pass when deploying.

If we don't explicitly pass a --profile flag then the values resolve to the account and region, that correspond to our default AWS profile on that machine.

Environment Agnostic CDK Stacks #

The default behavior when we don't specify account and region is that the stack we deploy is environment agnostic.

This means, that CDK CLI checks whether we passed in the --profile flag when deploying, if we did, it uses the account and region that correspond to that profile:

npx cdk deploy --profile myprofile my-stack

If we don't pass the --profile flag, CDK takes the account and region properties from the default profile on that machine:

npx cdk deploy my-stack

When we deploy an environment agnostic stack we're unable to access the resolved values of the account and region properties, because they get resolved at deployment time rather than synthesis time.

In order to explicitly set the account and region properties when deploying a CDK application we have to set the env property when initializing the stack.

const app = new cdk.App();

new MyCdkStack(app, `cdk-stack`, {
  stackName: `cdk-stack`,
  // 👇 explicitly setting env
  env: {
    region: 'us-east-1',
    account: 123456789,
  },
});

Further Reading #

• AWS CDK Tutorial for Beginners - Step-by-Step Guide
• How does AWS CDK work
• What is a Token in AWS CDK
• CDK Constructs - Complete Guide
• What is an identifier (id) in AWS CDK
• How to use Context in AWS CDK
• How to use Parameters in AWS CDK