@serverless-stack/cli

The SST CLI (@serverless-stack/cli) allows you to build, deploy, test, and remove Serverless Stack apps.

Installation#

While it can be installed globally, it's recommended to install it locally in your project instead.

# With npm
npm install @serverless-stack/cli --save-exact
# Or with Yarn
yarn add @serverless-stack/cli --exact

Usage#

Once installed locally, you can run the commands using.

# With npm
npx sst <command>
# Or with Yarn
yarn sst <command>

Commands#

start#

Starts up a local development environment for your Lambda functions. It allows you to make changes and test your functions without having to deploy them. Here is how it works:

  1. Before deploying your app, SST first deploys a stack with a Lambda powered WebSocket API.
  2. While deploying your app, it replaces all the sst.Function constructs with a stub Lambda function.
  3. SST starts up a local client that connects to the WebSocket API.
  4. When your Lambda functions are invoked, the stub Lambdas send the request to the WebSocket API.
  5. This in turn sends the request to your local SST client.
  6. The client then invokes the local version of your Lambda function and sends back the results to the WebSocket API.
  7. The WebSocket API responds to the stub Lambda with the results and the original request continues.

This means that for any new requests, the local version of your Lambdas will be invoked. Without having to deploy them.

Note that all this is deployed to your AWS account. There are no 3rd party services involved and your data never leaves your account. And since the WebSocket API is completely serverless, it's basically free for most use cases.

Build process#

sst start also starts up a watcher to transpile your Lambda functions. When a change is detected, it does the following:

  • Transpiles your ES or TS functions using esbuild.
  • If a request comes in while the functions are being transpiled, it blocks them until the process is complete.
  • Once transpiled, it'll respond to any blocked requests.
  • Then get the list of files that've been edited/added as detected by esbuild.
  • It'll run ESLint on these files in a separate thread.
  • And if there are any TS files that've been affected, it'll type check them using TypeScript. This is also done in a separate thread.

Thanks to esbuild and this build process, the changes are reflected as fast as possible. And by blocking the incoming requests, you can be sure that the most recent changes are reflected. Also, running the lint and type checking processes in separate threads, makes sure that it doesn't interfere with the main build process.

build#

Build your app and synthesize your stacks.

Generates a build/ directory with the compiled files and a build/cdk.out/ directory with the synthesized CloudFormation stacks.

deploy [stack]#

Deploy all your stacks to AWS. Or optionally deploy a specific stack.

Options#

  • --outputs-file

    Pass in the --outputs-file <filename> option if you want to write AWS CloudFormation stack outputs to a JSON file. Works the same way as the --outputs-file option for AWS CDK.

remove [stack]#

Remove all your stacks and all of their resources from AWS. Or optionally remove a specific stack. Also removes the debug stack that might've been deployed along with sst start.

add-cdk [packages..]#

Installs the given AWS CDK npm packages with the appropriate CDK version. This convenience method helps get around the known CDK issue of version mismatches. This command internally simply does and npm install or yarn add.

So instead of installing the CDK npm packages directly:

npm install @aws-cdk/aws-s3 @aws-cdk/aws-iam

Use the add-cdk command instead.

npx sst add-cdk @aws-cdk/aws-s3 @aws-cdk/aws-iam

Which in turn does:

npm install @aws-cdk/aws-s3@x.x.x @aws-cdk/aws-iam@x.x.x

Where x.x.x is the version of CDK that's being used internally. Note, that it'll use Yarn instead if it detects a yarn.lock file in your project.

Options#

  • --dev

    You can also pass in the --dev option if you need the packages to be installed as devDependencies.

test#

Runs your tests using Jest. Takes all the Jest CLI options.

cdk#

The SST CLI comes with a forked version of AWS CDK that it uses internally. This command gives direct access to it. To use this command you'll need to pass in the location of the CDK app. In our cases this is going to be generated in build/run.js. For example, to run the CDK list command you'll need to.

npx sst cdk --app=build/run.js list

Options#

--stage#

The stage you want to deploy to. Defaults to the one specified in your sst.json. Or uses dev.

--region#

The region you want to deploy to. Defaults to the one specified in your sst.json. Or uses us-east-1.

AWS Profile#

Specify the AWS account you want to deploy to by using the AWS_PROFILE CLI environment variable. If not specified, uses the default AWS profile. Read more about AWS profiles here. For example:

AWS_PROFILE=production npx sst deploy

Where production is a profile defined locally in your ~/.aws/credentials.

Package scripts#

If you used the create-serverless-stack CLI to create your app, the above commands (start, build, deploy, and remove) are also available in your package.json. So you can run them using.

# With npm
npm run <command>
# Or with Yarn
yarn run <command>
note

If you are using npm run deploy, you'll need to add an extra -- for the options.

For example, to set the stage and region:

npm run deploy -- --stage prod --region eu-west-1
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