(@aws-cdk/aws-iot): CfnLocationAction asks for Date type despite spec wanting Timestamp type

[dreamorosi]

Describe the bug

The iot.CfnTopicRule construct now supports an action called LocationAction (link to CloudFormation docs).

The LocationAction entity has a property called Timestamp which according to the CloudFormation docs is supposed to be of type AWS::IoT::TopicRule Timestamp and have shape:

{
  "Unit": String,
  "Value": String
}

At present, in version 1.179.0 the property has incorrect type of Date, which causes the synth step to fail.

Expected Behavior

The resource should have the correct type and allow to deploy correctly.

Current Behavior

Error:

cdk-stack.ts(114,17): error TS2322: Type '{ value: string; unit: string; }' is not assignable to type 'Date | IResolvable'.
  Object literal may only specify known properties, but 'value' does not exist in type 'Date | IResolvable'

Reproduction Steps

import * as cdk from "@aws-cdk/core";
import * as iot from "@aws-cdk/aws-iot";
import * as iam from "@aws-cdk/aws-iam";

export class cdkStack extends cdk.Stack {
  constructor(
    scope: cdk.Construct,
    id: string,
    props?: cdk.StackProps,
  ) {
    super(scope, id, props);

    const role = new iam.Role(this, "iot-tracker-role", {
      assumedBy: new iam.ServicePrincipal("iot.amazonaws.com"),
      description: "IAM Role that allows IoT Core to update a Tracker",
      inlinePolicies: {
        allowTracker: new iam.PolicyDocument({
          statements: [
            new iam.PolicyStatement({
              resources: [
                `arn:aws:geo:${cdk.Stack.of(this).region}:${
                  cdk.Stack.of(this).account
                }:tracker/tracker_location_workshop`,
              ],
              actions: ["geo:BatchUpdateDevicePosition"],
            }),
          ],
        }),
      },
    });

    // Create an IoT Topic Rule that will send the location updates to Location Service
    const topicRule = new iot.CfnTopicRule(this, "TopicRule", {
      ruleName: "assetTrackingRule",
      topicRulePayload: {
        sql: `SELECT * FROM 'iot/trackedAssets'`,
        awsIotSqlVersion: "2016-03-23",
        actions: [
          {
            location: {
              deviceId: "${deviceID}",
              latitude: "${longitude}",
              longitude: "${latitude}",
              roleArn: role.roleArn,
              timestamp: {
                value: "${timestamp()}",
                unit: "MILLISECONDS",
              },
              trackerName: "tracker_location_workshop",
            },
          }
        ],
      },
    });
  }
}

Possible Solution

Change the type to the correct one.

Additional Information/Context

Adding this manual override to the resource allows to deploy correctly, proving that the resource is mistyped in CDK:

topicRule.addOverride("Properties.TopicRulePayload.Actions.0", {
      Location: {
        DeviceId: "${deviceID}",
        Latitude: "${longitude}",
        Longitude: "${latitude}",
        RoleArn: role.roleArn,
        Timestamp: {
          Value: "${timestamp()}",
          Unit: "MILLISECONDS",
        },
        TrackerName: "tracker_location_workshop-ok",
      },
    });

CDK CLI Version

2.41.0

Framework Version

No response

Node.js Version

16.15.0

OS

Linux / macOS

Language

Typescript

Language Version

No response

Other information

No response

[peterwoodworth]

Thanks for reporting this @dreamorosi,

This has been recently added to our cfnspec and the cfnspec itself looks good, so I think the issue is that we are messing up the conversion from the spec to the type. I wonder if this is because we have Timestamp as a Primitive Type in the Cfnspec, this could be overriding something somewhere?

aws-cdk/packages/@aws-cdk/cfnspec/lib/schema/base-types.ts

Line 12 in 74318c7

Timestamp = 'Timestamp',

And like you mentioned, we can work around this by using an override 🙂 Until this gets fixed we can use this feature with overrides

[sthuber90]

@peterwoodworth I'd be happy to take over or support in fixing this. I assume removing the Timestamp from the primitive types is not an option? 😅 Can you help me and tell me how the files in packages/aws-cdk-lib/aws-iot/lib get build?

[peterwoodworth]

I don't think I know how we should fix this - but I can provide you with some direction to get the ball rolling on fixing this 🙂

I assume removing the Timestamp from the primitive types is not an option?

Correct, this will not be the way to go.

Our Cfn resources get built based off the CfnSpec. We ingest this specification file, and create types and classes from it which model the actual CloudFormation resources. We split up the spec by each service. What you see here is basically what you're going to get, but you can see in this folder we have a bunch of patches that override the specification before we start creating classes and types based on the spec. I anticipate that we could fix this by slightly renaming the Timestamp associated with Iot through a patch file - however I don't have a better solution. Maybe someone else from the team, or you might have one 🙂

[sthuber90]

The overall problem seems to be that here the complex and primitive types get mixed.

aws-cdk/tools/@aws-cdk/cfn2ts/lib/spec-utils.ts

Line 77 in a0ad49d

return complexItemTypeNames(spec).concat(primitiveItemTypeNames(spec));

Therefore, we can no longer differentiate between a timestamp reflecting a date and a timestamp as a complex type, such as it is the case here.

After some testing it seems that this would require a very big rewrite which I'm not able to do myself. Therefore, I'm following @peterwoodworth's approach and try to patch the resource.

[github-actions]

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