Introduction - Welcome to the AWS CDK World

About This Book

This book aims to help you learn AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) in 5 days and acquire practical infrastructure management skills.

Target Audience

• Those with basic AWS knowledge
• Those with programming experience (especially TypeScript/JavaScript)
• Those interested in Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
• Those who want to move away from manual infrastructure management

Learning Objectives

By the end of this book, you will be able to:

1. Understand AWS CDK basic concepts and set up the environment
2. Create and manage basic AWS resources using CDK
3. Create reusable components (Constructs)
4. Integrate with testing and CI/CD pipelines
5. Deploy safely to production environments

What is AWS CDK?

AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) is an open-source framework for defining cloud application resources using programming languages.

Differences from Traditional Methods

Traditional CloudFormation

Resources:
  MyBucket:
    Type: AWS::S3::Bucket
    Properties:
      BucketName: my-app-bucket-12345
      VersioningConfiguration:
        Status: Enabled
      PublicAccessBlockConfiguration:
        BlockPublicAcls: true
        BlockPublicPolicy: true
        IgnorePublicAcls: true
        RestrictPublicBuckets: true

AWS CDK (TypeScript)

import * as s3 from 'aws-cdk-lib/aws-s3';

const bucket = new s3.Bucket(this, 'MyBucket', {
  bucketName: 'my-app-bucket-12345',
  versioned: true,
  blockPublicAccess: s3.BlockPublicAccess.BLOCK_ALL
});

AWS CDK Features

1. Leverage Programming Language Power

   • Use conditional statements, loops, functions, etc.
   • Utilize IDE completion and refactoring features
   • Apply existing programming skills

2. Reusability and Modularization

   • Create and reuse custom Constructs
   • Share as npm packages
   • Standardize best practices within organizations

3. Type Safety

   • Detect errors at compile time
   • Property completion and validation
   • Documented APIs

4. CloudFormation Compatibility

   • Generates CloudFormation templates ultimately
   • Integrable with existing CloudFormation resources
   • Access to all CloudFormation features

How to Proceed with Learning

5-Day Learning Schedule

Day	Theme	Content
Day 1	Basics and Setup	CDK basic concepts, environment setup, initial deployment
Day 2	Core Constructs and Stack	Creating basic AWS resources, Stack management
Day 3	Advanced Constructs and Patterns	Custom Constructs, design patterns
Day 4	Testing and CI/CD	Unit tests, integration tests, CI/CD pipelines
Day 5	Best Practices and Production Deployment	Security, monitoring, production operations

Prerequisites Check

Before starting, please confirm you have the following knowledge:

AWS Basic Knowledge

• Basic services like EC2, S3, Lambda, RDS
• Basic IAM concepts (roles, policies)
• VPC and networking basics

Programming Knowledge

• Basic TypeScript/JavaScript syntax
• Experience with npm/yarn
• Basic Git operations

Development Environment

• Node.js 18.x or higher
• Any IDE or editor (VS Code recommended)
• AWS CLI
• Git

Book Structure

Each chapter is structured as follows:

1. Overview - Summary of content to be learned that day
2. Theory - Basic concepts and theoretical background
3. Practice - Hands-on learning by writing actual code
4. Exercises - Tasks to deepen understanding
5. Summary - Review of that day's learning content

About the Sample Project

In this book, we will progressively build a web application as follows:

1. Day 1: Static website (S3 + CloudFront)
2. Day 2: Serverless API (Lambda + API Gateway)
3. Day 3: Database integration (DynamoDB)
4. Day 4: CI/CD pipeline
5. Day 5: Monitoring and alerts

Architecture Overview

┌─────────────────┐    ┌──────────────────┐    ┌─────────────────┐
│   CloudFront    │────│   API Gateway    │────│     Lambda      │
│  (Static Web)   │    │   (REST API)     │    │  (Business      │
└─────────────────┘    └──────────────────┘    │   Logic)        │
                                               └─────────────────┘
                                                        │
                                               ┌─────────────────┐
                                               │    DynamoDB     │
                                               │   (Database)    │
                                               └─────────────────┘

Next Steps

When ready, proceed to Day 1: "AWS CDK Environment Setup and First Steps".

By learning through writing actual code, you should experience the power and convenience of AWS CDK.

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Note: Running the sample code in this book may incur AWS charges. We recommend practicing within the AWS free tier limits. Be sure to delete unnecessary resources when done.