Configure Cognito Identity Pool in serverless

If you recall from the earlier part of this section, we used the Cognito Identity Pool as a way to control which AWS resources our logged-in users will have access to. We also tie in our Cognito User Pool as our authentication provider.

Create the Resource

Add the following to resources/cognito-identity-pool.yml.

Resources:
  # The federated identity for our user pool to auth with
  CognitoIdentityPool:
    Type: AWS::Cognito::IdentityPool
    Properties:
      # Generate a name based on the stage
      IdentityPoolName: ${self:custom.stage}IdentityPool
      # Don't allow unathenticated users
      AllowUnauthenticatedIdentities: false
      # Link to our User Pool
      CognitoIdentityProviders:
        - ClientId:
            Ref: CognitoUserPoolClient
          ProviderName:
            Fn::GetAtt: [ "CognitoUserPool", "ProviderName" ]
            
  # IAM roles
  CognitoIdentityPoolRoles:
    Type: AWS::Cognito::IdentityPoolRoleAttachment
    Properties:
      IdentityPoolId:
        Ref: CognitoIdentityPool
      Roles:
        authenticated:
          Fn::GetAtt: [CognitoAuthRole, Arn]
          
  # IAM role used for authenticated users
  CognitoAuthRole:
    Type: AWS::IAM::Role
    Properties:
      Path: /
      AssumeRolePolicyDocument:
        Version: '2012-10-17'
        Statement:
          - Effect: 'Allow'
            Principal:
              Federated: 'cognito-identity.amazonaws.com'
            Action:
              - 'sts:AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity'
            Condition:
              StringEquals:
                'cognito-identity.amazonaws.com:aud':
                  Ref: CognitoIdentityPool
              'ForAnyValue:StringLike':
                'cognito-identity.amazonaws.com:amr': authenticated
      Policies:
        - PolicyName: 'CognitoAuthorizedPolicy'
          PolicyDocument:
            Version: '2012-10-17'
            Statement:
              - Effect: 'Allow'
                Action:
                  - 'mobileanalytics:PutEvents'
                  - 'cognito-sync:*'
                  - 'cognito-identity:*'
                Resource: '*'
              
              # Allow users to invoke our API
              - Effect: 'Allow'
                Action:
                  - 'execute-api:Invoke'
                Resource:
                  Fn::Join:
                    - ''
                    -
                      - 'arn:aws:execute-api:'
                      - Ref: AWS::Region
                      - ':'
                      - Ref: AWS::AccountId
                      - ':'
                      - Ref: ApiGatewayRestApi
                      - '/*'
              
              # Allow users to upload attachments to their
              # folder inside our S3 bucket
              - Effect: 'Allow'
                Action:
                  - 's3:*'
                Resource:
                  - Fn::Join:
                    - ''
                    -
                      - Fn::GetAtt: [AttachmentsBucket, Arn]
                      - '/private/'
                      - '$'
                      - '{cognito-identity.amazonaws.com:sub}/*'
  
# Print out the Id of the Identity Pool that is created
Outputs:
  IdentityPoolId:
    Value:
      Ref: CognitoIdentityPool

While it looks like there’s a whole lot going on here, it’s pretty much exactly what we did back in the Create a Cognito identity pool chapter. It’s just that CloudFormation can be a bit verbose and can end up looking a bit intimidating.

Let’s quickly go over the various sections of this configuration:

First we name our Identity Pool based on the stage name using ${self:custom.stage}.
We specify that we only want logged in users by adding AllowUnauthenticatedIdentities: false.
Next we state that we want to use our User Pool as the identity provider. We are doing this specifically using the Ref: CognitoUserPoolClient line. If you refer back to the Configure Cognito User Pool in Serverless chapter, you’ll notice we have a block under CognitoUserPoolClient that we are referencing here.
We then attach an IAM role to our authenticated users.
We add the various parts to this role. This is exactly what we use in the Create a Cognito identity pool chapter. It just needs to be formatted this way to work with CloudFormation.
The ApiGatewayRestApi ref that you might notice is generated by Serverless Framework when you define an API endpoint in your serverless.yml. So in this case, we are referencing the API resource that we are creating.
For the S3 bucket the name is generated by AWS. So for this case we use the Fn::GetAtt: [AttachmentsBucket, Arn] to get it’s exact name.
Finally, we print out the generated Identity Pool Id in the Outputs: block.

Add the Resource

Let’s reference the resource in our serverless.yml. Replace your resources: block with the following.

# Create our resources with separate CloudFormation templates
resources:
  # DynamoDB
  - ${file(resources/dynamodb-table.yml)}
  # S3
  - ${file(resources/s3-bucket.yml)}
  # Cognito
  - ${file(resources/cognito-user-pool.yml)}
  - ${file(resources/cognito-identity-pool.yml)}

Now we are almost ready to deploy our new serverless infrastructure. We are going to add one more resource to the mix. It’ll make it easier for us to debug CORS errors on the frontend.

Create the Resource

Add the Resource

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