AWS Cloudformation for building and deploying image from ECR. CodePipeline issue with artifact not found

Question

I have a project which has this directory structure and I'm deploying it to AWS.

./frontend
./backend

I have two Cloudformation scripts: (1) to deploy the backend as a Fargate cluster, and (2) the other is for the GitHub/CodeBuild/CodePipelines.

Inside the backend directory is the buildspec.yml file which has these lines for the final steps for saving the artifact:

  post_build:
    commands:
      - echo Build completed on `date`
      - echo Pushing the Docker images...
      - docker push $REPOSITORY_URI:latest
      - docker push $REPOSITORY_URI:$IMAGE_TAG
      - echo Writing image definitions file...
      - printf '[{"name":"cicd-container","imageUri":"%s"}]' $REPOSITORY_URI:$IMAGE_TAG > imagedefinitions.json
      - cat imagedefinitions.json
artifacts:
  files:
    - ./backend/imagedefinitions.json

My cloudformation script for CodeBuild is essentially this:

- Name: BuildBackend
          Actions:
          - Name: Build
            ActionTypeId:
              Category: Build
              Owner: AWS
              Provider: CodeBuild
              Version: 1
            OutputArtifacts:
              - Name: be-build
            InputArtifacts:
              - Name: source-output
            Configuration:
                ProjectName: !Ref BackendCodeBuildProject
            RunOrder: 1

When I navigate to S3, I can see the artifacts being built and saved inside the zip file, i.e. I navigate to here and download it. The file is saved inside ./backend/imagedefinitions.json.

My problem is that I'm trying to use the portion of the Cloudformation script below to use the contents of imagedefinitions.json as input to another script updating the Fargate cluster.

      - Name: DeployBackend
          Actions:
          - Name: Deploy
            ActionTypeId:
              Category: Deploy
              Owner: AWS
              Version: 1
              Provider: CloudFormation
            InputArtifacts:
              - Name: source-output
              - Name: be-build
            Configuration:
                ActionMode: CREATE_UPDATE
                Capabilities: CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM
                # Pass parameter values to Fargate-Cluster.yml for deployment
                ParameterOverrides: !Sub |
                  {
                    "ImageURI" : { 
                      "Fn::GetParam" : [
                        "be-build", 
                        "/backend/imagedefinitions.json", 
                        "ImageURI"
                      ]},
                    "Stage":  "${Stage}",
                    "ContainerPort": "${ContainerPort}"
                  }
                RoleArn: 
                  Fn::GetAtt: [ CloudformationExecutionRole, Arn ]
                StackName: !Join ['-', [!Ref Stage, !Ref 'AWS::AccountId', 'secure-cycle-fargate-cluster']]
                TemplatePath: source-output::Cloudformation/Fargate-Cluster.yml
            RunOrder: 1

The error I receive is:

Action execution failed File [/backend/imagedefinitions.json] does not exist in artifact [be-build]

I've tried different paths such as ./backend/imagedefinitions.json and backend/imagedefinitions.json. Nothing has worked. I'm trying to understand what I'm doing wrong here.

Answer 1

The approach I took was to set base-directory: backend in the buildspec.yml file.

Also, I realized my buildspec file had an error when saving the imagedefinitions.json. This created another error after I solved the first problem.