AWS SAM Policy Templates

AWS SAM allows you to choose from a list of policy templates to scope the permissions of your Lambda functions to the resources that are used by your application.

AWS SAM applications in the AWS Serverless Application Repository that use policy templates don't require any special customer acknowledgments to deploy the application from the AWS Serverless Application Repository.

If you want to request a new policy template to be added, do the following:

1. Submit a pull request against the policy_templates.json source file in the develop branch of the AWS SAM GitHub project. You can find the source file in policy_templates.json on the GitHub website.

2. Submit an issue in the AWS SAM GitHub project that includes the reasons for your pull request and a link to the request. Use this link to submit a new issue: AWS Serverless Application Model: Issues.

Syntax

For every policy template you specify in your AWS SAM template file, you must always specify an object containing the policy template's placeholder values. If a policy template does not require any placeholder values, you must specify an empty object.

YAML

MyFunction:
  Type: AWS::Serverless::Function
  Properties:
    Policies:
      - PolicyTemplateName1:        # Policy template with placeholder value
          Key1: Value1
      - PolicyTemplateName2: {}     # Policy template with no placeholder value

Examples

Example 1: Policy Template with Placeholder Values

The following example shows that the SQSPollerPolicy policy template expects a QueueName as a resource. The AWS SAM template retrieves the name of the "MyQueue" Amazon SQS queue, which you can create in the same application or requested as a parameter to the application.

MyFunction:
  Type: 'AWS::Serverless::Function'
  Properties:
    CodeUri: ${codeuri}
    Handler: hello.handler
    Runtime: python2.7
    Policies:
      - SQSPollerPolicy:
          QueueName:
            !GetAtt MyQueue.QueueName
				

Example 2: Policy Template with No Placeholder Values

The following example contains the CloudWatchPutMetricPolicy policy template, which has no placeholder values.

Note

Even though there are no placeholder values, you must specify an empty object, otherwise an error will result.

MyFunction:
  Type: 'AWS::Serverless::Function'
  Properties:
    CodeUri: ${codeuri}
    Handler: hello.handler
    Runtime: python2.7
    Policies:
      - CloudWatchPutMetricPolicy: {}
				

Policy Template Table

The following is a table of the available policy templates.

Policy Template	Description
SQSPollerPolicy	Gives permission to poll an Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) queue.
LambdaInvokePolicy	Gives permission to invoke an AWS Lambda function, alias, or version.
CloudWatchDescribeAlarmHistoryPolicy	Gives permission to describe CloudWatch alarm history.
CloudWatchPutMetricPolicy	Gives permission to send metrics to CloudWatch.
EC2DescribePolicy	Gives permission to describe Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances.
DynamoDBCrudPolicy	Gives create, read, update, and delete permissions to an Amazon DynamoDB table.
DynamoDBReadPolicy	Gives read-only permission to a DynamoDB table.
DynamoDBWritePolicy	Gives write-only permission to a DynamoDB table.
DynamoDBReconfigurePolicy	Gives permission to reconfigure a DynamoDB table.
SESSendBouncePolicy	Gives SendBounce permission to an Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) identity.
ElasticsearchHttpPostPolicy	Gives POST permission to Amazon Elasticsearch Service.
S3ReadPolicy	Gives read-only permission to objects in an Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket.
S3WritePolicy	Gives write permission to objects in an Amazon S3 bucket.
S3CrudPolicy	Gives create, read, update, and delete permission to objects in an Amazon S3 bucket.
AMIDescribePolicy	Gives permission to describe Amazon Machine Images (AMIs).
CloudFormationDescribeStacksPolicy	Gives permission to describe AWS CloudFormation stacks.
RekognitionDetectOnlyPolicy	Gives permission to detect faces, labels, and text.
RekognitionNoDataAccessPolicy	Gives permission to compare and detect faces and labels.
RekognitionReadPolicy	Gives permission to list and search faces.
RekognitionWriteOnlyAccessPolicy	Gives permission to create collection and index faces.
SQSSendMessagePolicy	Gives permission to send message to an Amazon SQS queue.
SNSPublishMessagePolicy	Gives permission to publish a message to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic.
VPCAccessPolicy	Gives access to create, delete, describe, and detach elastic network interfaces.
DynamoDBStreamReadPolicy	Gives permission to describe and read DynamoDB streams and records.
KinesisStreamReadPolicy	Gives permission to list and read an Amazon Kinesis stream.
SESCrudPolicy	Gives permission to send email and verify identity.
SNSCrudPolicy	Gives permission to create, publish, and subscribe to Amazon SNS topics.
KinesisCrudPolicy	Gives permission to create, publish, and delete an Amazon Kinesis stream.
KMSDecryptPolicy	Gives permission to decrypt with an AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) key.
KMSEncryptPolicy	Gives permission to encrypt with an AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) key.
PollyFullAccessPolicy	Gives full access permission to Amazon Polly lexicon resources.
S3FullAccessPolicy	Gives full access permission to objects in an Amazon S3 bucket.
CodePipelineLambdaExecutionPolicy	Gives permission for a Lambda function invoked by CodePipeline to report the status of the job.
ServerlessRepoReadWriteAccessPolicy	Gives permission to create and list applications in the AWS Serverless Application Repository service.
EC2CopyImagePolicy	Gives permission to copy Amazon EC2 images.
AWSSecretsManagerRotationPolicy	Gives permission to rotate a secret in AWS Secrets Manager.
AWSSecretsManagerGetSecretValuePolicy	Gives permission to get the secret value for the specified AWS Secrets Manager secret.
CodePipelineReadOnlyPolicy	Gives read permission to get details about a CodePipeline pipeline.
CloudWatchDashboardPolicy	Gives permissions to put metrics to operate on CloudWatch dashboards.
RekognitionFacesManagementPolicy	Gives permission to add, delete, and search faces in an Amazon Rekognition collection.
RekognitionFacesPolicy	Gives permission to compare and detect faces and labels.
RekognitionLabelsPolicy	Gives permission to detect object and moderation labels.
DynamoDBBackupFullAccessPolicy	Gives read and write permission to DynamoDB on-demand backups for a table.
DynamoDBRestoreFromBackupPolicy	Gives permission to restore a DynamoDB table from backup.
ComprehendBasicAccessPolicy	Gives permission for detecting entities, key phrases, languages, and sentiments.
MobileAnalyticsWriteOnlyAccessPolicy	Gives write-only permission to put event data for all application resources.
PinpointEndpointAccessPolicy	Gives permission to get and update endpoints for an Amazon Pinpoint application.
FirehoseWritePolicy	Gives permission to write to a Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream.
FirehoseCrudPolicy	Gives permission to create, write, update, and delete a Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream.
EKSDescribePolicy	Gives permission to describe or list Amazon EKS clusters.
CostExplorerReadOnlyPolicy	Gives read-only permission to the read-only Cost Explorer APIs for billing history.
OrganizationsListAccountsPolicy	Gives read-only permission to list child account names and IDs.
SESBulkTemplatedCrudPolicy	Gives permission to send email, templated email, templated bulk emails and verify identity.
SESEmailTemplateCrudPolicy	Gives permission to create, get, list, update and delete Amazon SES email templates.
FilterLogEventsPolicy	Gives permission to filter CloudWatch Logs events from a specified log group.
SSMParameterReadPolicy	Gives permission to access a parameters from an Amazon EC2 Systems Manager (SSM) parameter store to load secrets in this account.
StepFunctionsExecutionPolicy	Gives permission to start a Step Functions state machine execution.
CodeCommitCrudPolicy	Gives permissions to create/read/update/delete objects within a specific CodeCommit repository.
CodeCommitReadPolicy	Gives permissions to read objects within a specific CodeCommit repository.
AthenaQueryPolicy	Gives permissions to execute Athena queries.
TextractPolicy	Gives full access to Amazon Textract.
TextractDetectAnalyzePolicy	Gives access to detect and analyze documents with Amazon Textract.
TextractGetResultPolicy	Gives access to get detected and analyzed documents from Amazon Textract.
EventBridgePutEventsPolicy	Gives permissions to send events to EventBridge.
ElasticMapReduceModifyInstanceFleetPolicy	Gives permission to list details and modify capacities for instance fleets within a cluster.
ElasticMapReduceSetTerminationProtectionPolicy	Gives permission to set termination protection for a cluster.
ElasticMapReduceModifyInstanceGroupsPolicy	Gives permission to list details and modify settings for instance groups within a cluster.
ElasticMapReduceCancelStepsPolicy	Gives permission to cancel a pending step or steps in a running cluster.
ElasticMapReduceTerminateJobFlowsPolicy	Gives permission to shut down a cluster.
ElasticMapReduceAddJobFlowStepsPolicy	Gives permission to add new steps to a running cluster.
SageMakerCreateEndpointPolicy	Gives permission to create an endpoint in Amazon SageMaker.
SageMakerCreateEndpointConfigPolicy	Gives permission to create an endpoint configuration in Amazon SageMaker.
EcsRunTaskPolicy	Gives permission to start a new task for a task definition.
EFSWriteAccessPolicy	Gives permission to mount an Amazon EFS file system with write access.

Troubleshooting

SAM CLI error: "Must specify valid parameter values for policy template '<policy-template-name>'"

When executing sam build, you see the following error:

"Must specify valid parameter values for policy template '<policy-template-name>'"
            

This means that you did not pass an empty object when declaring a policy template that does not have any placeholder values.

To fix this, declare the policy like the following example for CloudWatchPutMetricPolicy.

MyFunction:
  Policies:
    - CloudWatchPutMetricPolicy: {}