Retrieving a Template

AWS CloudFormation stores the template you use to create your stack as part of the stack. You can download the template from AWS CloudFormation using the cfn-get-template command. Even if a stack has been deleted, you can download its template.

For example, suppose you have created a stack named MySQSTemplate which creates a simple SQS queue. The following shows what could be returned by cfn-get-template:

PROMPT> cfn-get-template MySQSTemplate

TEMPLATE "{
    "AWSTemplateFormatVersion" : "2010-09-09",
    "Resources" : {
        "MyInstance" : {
            "Type" : "AWS::EC2::Instance",
            "Properties" : {
                "UserData" : {
                    "Fn::Base64" : {
                      "Fn::Join" : [ "", [ "Queue=", { "Ref" : "MyQueue" }]]
                    }
                },
                "AvailabilityZone" : "us-east-1a",
                "ImageId" : "ami-20b65349"
            }
        },
        "MyQueue" : {
            "Type" : "AWS::SQS::Queue",
            "Properties" : {
            }
        }
    },
    "Outputs" : {
        "QueueName" : {
            "Value" : { "Ref" : "MyQueue" }
        }
    }
}
"

The output contains the entire template body, enclosed in quotation marks.