AWS::IAM::Role - AWS CloudFormation
SyntaxPropertiesReturn valuesExamplesSee also

AWS::IAM::Role

Creates a new role for your AWS account. For more information about roles, see IAM roles. For information about quotas for role names and the number of roles you can create, see IAM and AWS STS quotas in the IAM User Guide.

Syntax

To declare this entity in your AWS CloudFormation template, use the following syntax:

JSON

{
  "Type" : "AWS::IAM::Role",
  "Properties" : {
      "AssumeRolePolicyDocument" : Json,
      "Description" : String,
      "ManagedPolicyArns" : [ String, ... ],
      "MaxSessionDuration" : Integer,
      "Path" : String,
      "PermissionsBoundary" : String,
      "Policies" : [ Policy, ... ],
      "RoleName" : String,
      "Tags" : [ Tag, ... ]
    }
}

YAML

Type: AWS::IAM::Role
Properties: 
  AssumeRolePolicyDocument: Json
  Description: String
  ManagedPolicyArns: 
    - String
  MaxSessionDuration: Integer
  Path: String
  PermissionsBoundary: String
  Policies: 
    - Policy
  RoleName: String
  Tags: 
    - Tag

Properties

AssumeRolePolicyDocument

The trust policy that is associated with this role. Trust policies define which entities can assume the role. You can associate only one trust policy with a role. For an example of a policy that can be used to assume a role, see Template Examples. For more information about the elements that you can use in an IAM policy, see IAM Policy Elements Reference in the IAM User Guide.

Required: Yes

Type: Json

Update requires: No interruption

Description

A description of the role that you provide.

Required: No

Type: String

Maximum: 1000

Pattern: [\p{L}\p{M}\p{Z}\p{S}\p{N}\p{P}]*

Update requires: No interruption

ManagedPolicyArns

A list of Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) of the IAM managed policies that you want to attach to the role.

For more information about ARNs, see Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) and AWS Service Namespaces in the AWS General Reference.

Required: No

Type: List of String

Update requires: No interruption

MaxSessionDuration

The maximum session duration (in seconds) that you want to set for the specified role. If you do not specify a value for this setting, the default maximum of one hour is applied. This setting can have a value from 1 hour to 12 hours.

Anyone who assumes the role from the or API can use the DurationSeconds API parameter or the duration-seconds CLI parameter to request a longer session. The MaxSessionDuration setting determines the maximum duration that can be requested using the DurationSeconds parameter. If users don't specify a value for the DurationSeconds parameter, their security credentials are valid for one hour by default. This applies when you use the AssumeRole* API operations or the assume-role* CLI operations but does not apply when you use those operations to create a console URL. For more information, see Using IAM roles in the IAM User Guide.

Required: No

Type: Integer

Minimum: 3600

Maximum: 43200

Update requires: No interruption

Path

The path to the role. For more information about paths, see IAM Identifiers in the IAM User Guide.

This parameter is optional. If it is not included, it defaults to a slash (/).

This parameter allows (through its regex pattern) a string of characters consisting of either a forward slash (/) by itself or a string that must begin and end with forward slashes. In addition, it can contain any ASCII character from the ! (\u0021) through the DEL character (\u007F), including most punctuation characters, digits, and upper and lowercased letters.

Required: No

Type: String

Minimum: 1

Maximum: 512

Pattern: (\u002F)|(\u002F[\u0021-\u007F]+\u002F)

Update requires: Replacement

PermissionsBoundary

The ARN of the policy used to set the permissions boundary for the role.

For more information about permissions boundaries, see Permissions boundaries for IAM identities in the IAM User Guide.

Required: No

Type: String

Update requires: No interruption

Policies

Adds or updates an inline policy document that is embedded in the specified IAM role.

When you embed an inline policy in a role, the inline policy is used as part of the role's access (permissions) policy. The role's trust policy is created at the same time as the role. You can update a role's trust policy later. For more information about IAM roles, go to Using Roles to Delegate Permissions and Federate Identities.

A role can also have an attached managed policy. For information about policies, see Managed Policies and Inline Policies in the IAM User Guide.

For information about limits on the number of inline policies that you can embed with a role, see Limitations on IAM Entities in the IAM User Guide.

Note

If an external policy (such as AWS::IAM::Policy or AWS::IAM::ManagedPolicy) has a Ref to a role and if a resource (such as AWS::ECS::Service) also has a Ref to the same role, add a DependsOn attribute to the resource to make the resource depend on the external policy. This dependency ensures that the role's policy is available throughout the resource's lifecycle. For example, when you delete a stack with an AWS::ECS::Service resource, the DependsOn attribute ensures that AWS CloudFormation deletes the AWS::ECS::Service resource before deleting its role's policy.

Required: No

Type: List of Policy

Update requires: No interruption

RoleName

A name for the IAM role, up to 64 characters in length. For valid values, see the RoleName parameter for the CreateRole action in the IAM User Guide.

This parameter allows (per its regex pattern) a string of characters consisting of upper and lowercase alphanumeric characters with no spaces. You can also include any of the following characters: _+=,.@-. The role name must be unique within the account. Role names are not distinguished by case. For example, you cannot create roles named both "Role1" and "role1".

If you don't specify a name, AWS CloudFormation generates a unique physical ID and uses that ID for the role name.

If you specify a name, you must specify the CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM value to acknowledge your template's capabilities. For more information, see Acknowledging IAM Resources in AWS CloudFormation Templates.

Important

Naming an IAM resource can cause an unrecoverable error if you reuse the same template in multiple Regions. To prevent this, we recommend using Fn::Join and AWS::Region to create a Region-specific name, as in the following example: {"Fn::Join": ["", [{"Ref": "AWS::Region"}, {"Ref": "MyResourceName"}]]}.

Required: No

Type: String

Update requires: Replacement

Tags

A list of tags that are attached to the role. For more information about tagging, see Tagging IAM resources in the IAM User Guide.

Required: No

Type: List of Tag

Maximum: 50

Update requires: No interruption

Return values

Ref

When the logical ID of this resource is provided to the Ref intrinsic function, Ref returns the resource name.

For example:

{ "Ref": "RootRole" }

For the AWS::IAM::Role resource with the logical ID RootRole, Ref will return the role name.

For more information about using the Ref function, see Ref.

Fn::GetAtt

The Fn::GetAtt intrinsic function returns a value for a specified attribute of this type. The following are the available attributes and sample return values.

For more information about using the Fn::GetAtt intrinsic function, see Fn::GetAtt.

Arn

Returns the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) for the role. For example:

{"Fn::GetAtt" : ["MyRole", "Arn"] }

This will return a value such as arn:aws:iam::1234567890:role/MyRole-AJJHDSKSDF.

RoleId

Returns the stable and unique string identifying the role. For example, AIDAJQABLZS4A3QDU576Q.

For more information about IDs, see IAM Identifiers in the IAM User Guide.

Examples

IAM Role with Embedded Policy and Instance Profiles

This example shows an embedded policy in the AWS::IAM::Role. The policy is specified inline in the Policies property of the AWS::IAM::Role. 

{
    "AWSTemplateFormatVersion": "2010-09-09",
    "Resources": {
        "RootRole": {
            "Type": "AWS::IAM::Role",
            "Properties": {
                "AssumeRolePolicyDocument": {
                    "Version": "2012-10-17",
                    "Statement": [
                        {
                            "Effect": "Allow",
                            "Principal": {
                                "Service": [
                                    "ec2.amazonaws.com"
                                ]
                            },
                            "Action": [
                                "sts:AssumeRole"
                            ]
                        }
                    ]
                },
                "Path": "/",
                "Policies": [
                    {
                        "PolicyName": "root",
                        "PolicyDocument": {
                            "Version": "2012-10-17",
                            "Statement": [
                                {
                                    "Effect": "Allow",
                                    "Action": "*",
                                    "Resource": "*"
                                }
                            ]
                        }
                    }
                ]
            }
        },
        "RootInstanceProfile": {
            "Type": "AWS::IAM::InstanceProfile",
            "Properties": {
                "Path": "/",
                "Roles": [
                    {
                        "Ref": "RootRole"
                    }
                ]
            }
        }
    }
}

YAML

AWSTemplateFormatVersion: "2010-09-09"
Resources:
  RootRole:
    Type: 'AWS::IAM::Role'
    Properties:
      AssumeRolePolicyDocument:
        Version: "2012-10-17"
        Statement:
          - Effect: Allow
            Principal:
              Service:
                - ec2.amazonaws.com
            Action:
              - 'sts:AssumeRole'
      Path: /
      Policies:
        - PolicyName: root
          PolicyDocument:
            Version: "2012-10-17"
            Statement:
              - Effect: Allow
                Action: '*'
                Resource: '*'
  RootInstanceProfile:
    Type: 'AWS::IAM::InstanceProfile'
    Properties:
      Path: /
      Roles:
        - !Ref RootRole

IAM Role with External Policy and Instance Profiles

In this example, the Policy and InstanceProfile resources are specified externally to the IAM Role. They refer to the role by specifying its name, "RootRole", in their respective Roles properties.

JSON

{
   "AWSTemplateFormatVersion": "2010-09-09",
   "Resources": {
      "RootRole": {
         "Type": "AWS::IAM::Role",
         "Properties": {
            "AssumeRolePolicyDocument": {
               "Version" : "2012-10-17",
               "Statement": [ {
                  "Effect": "Allow",
                  "Principal": {
                     "Service": [ "ec2.amazonaws.com" ]
                  },
                  "Action": [ "sts:AssumeRole" ]
               } ]
            },
            "Path": "/"
         }
      },
      "RolePolicies": {
         "Type": "AWS::IAM::Policy",
         "Properties": {
            "PolicyName": "root",
            "PolicyDocument": {
               "Version" : "2012-10-17",
               "Statement": [ {
                  "Effect": "Allow",
                  "Action": "*",
                  "Resource": "*"
               } ]
            },
            "Roles": [ {
               "Ref": "RootRole"
            } ]
         }
      },
      "RootInstanceProfile": {
         "Type": "AWS::IAM::InstanceProfile",
         "Properties": {
            "Path": "/",
            "Roles": [ {
               "Ref": "RootRole"
            } ]
         }
      }
   }
}

YAML

AWSTemplateFormatVersion: "2010-09-09"
Resources: 
  RootRole: 
    Type: "AWS::IAM::Role"
    Properties: 
      AssumeRolePolicyDocument: 
        Version: "2012-10-17"
        Statement: 
          - 
            Effect: "Allow"
            Principal: 
              Service: 
                - "ec2.amazonaws.com"
            Action: 
              - "sts:AssumeRole"
      Path: "/"
  RolePolicies: 
    Type: "AWS::IAM::Policy"
    Properties: 
      PolicyName: "root"
      PolicyDocument: 
        Version: "2012-10-17"
        Statement: 
          - Effect: "Allow"
            Action: "*"
            Resource: "*"
      Roles: 
        - Ref: "RootRole"
  RootInstanceProfile: 
    Type: "AWS::IAM::InstanceProfile"
    Properties: 
      Path: "/"
      Roles: 
        - Ref: "RootRole"

See also