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feat(client-appconfig): AWS AppConfig now supports dynamic parameters…
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…, which enhance the functionality of AppConfig Extensions by allowing you to provide parameter values to your Extensions at the time you deploy your configuration.
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awstools committed Mar 7, 2024
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AWS SDK for JavaScript AppConfig Client for Node.js, Browser and React Native.

<p>Use AppConfig, a capability of Amazon Web Services Systems Manager, to create, manage, and quickly
deploy application configurations. AppConfig supports controlled deployments to
applications of any size and includes built-in validation checks and monitoring. You can
use AppConfig with applications hosted on Amazon EC2 instances, Lambda, containers,
mobile applications, or IoT devices.</p>
<p>To prevent errors when deploying application configurations, especially for production
systems where a simple typo could cause an unexpected outage, AppConfig includes
validators. A validator provides a syntactic or semantic check to ensure that the
configuration you want to deploy works as intended. To validate your application
configuration data, you provide a schema or an Amazon Web Services Lambda function that runs against
the configuration. The configuration deployment or update can only proceed when the
configuration data is valid.</p>
<p>During a configuration deployment, AppConfig monitors the application to
ensure that the deployment is successful. If the system encounters an error, AppConfig rolls back the change to minimize impact for your application users. You can
configure a deployment strategy for each application or environment that includes
deployment criteria, including velocity, bake time, and alarms to monitor. Similar to error
monitoring, if a deployment triggers an alarm, AppConfig automatically rolls back
to the previous version. </p>
<p>AppConfig supports multiple use cases. Here are some examples:</p>
<p>AppConfig feature flags and dynamic configurations help software builders
quickly and securely adjust application behavior in production environments without full
code deployments. AppConfig speeds up software release frequency, improves
application resiliency, and helps you address emergent issues more quickly. With feature
flags, you can gradually release new capabilities to users and measure the impact of those
changes before fully deploying the new capabilities to all users. With operational flags
and dynamic configurations, you can update block lists, allow lists, throttling limits,
logging verbosity, and perform other operational tuning to quickly respond to issues in
production environments.</p>
<note>
<p>AppConfig is a capability of Amazon Web Services Systems Manager.</p>
</note>
<p>Despite the fact that application configuration content can vary greatly from
application to application, AppConfig supports the following use cases, which
cover a broad spectrum of customer needs:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>
<b>Feature flags</b>: Use AppConfig to turn on
new features that require a timely deployment, such as a product launch or
announcement. </p>
<b>Feature flags and toggles</b> - Safely release new
capabilities to your customers in a controlled environment. Instantly roll back
changes if you experience a problem.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<b>Application tuning</b>: Use AppConfig to
carefully introduce changes to your application that can only be tested with
production traffic.</p>
<b>Application tuning</b> - Carefully introduce
application changes while testing the impact of those changes with users in
production environments.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<b>Allow list</b>: Use AppConfig to allow
premium subscribers to access paid content. </p>
<b>Allow list or block list</b> - Control access to
premium features or instantly block specific users without deploying new code.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<b>Operational issues</b>: Use AppConfig to
reduce stress on your application when a dependency or other external factor impacts
the system.</p>
<b>Centralized configuration storage</b> - Keep your
configuration data organized and consistent across all of your workloads. You can use
AppConfig to deploy configuration data stored in the AppConfig
hosted configuration store, Secrets Manager, Systems Manager, Parameter
Store, or Amazon S3.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>
<b>How AppConfig works</b>
</p>
<p>This section provides a high-level description of how AppConfig works and how
you get started.</p>
<dl>
<dt>1. Identify configuration values in code you want to manage in the cloud</dt>
<dd>
<p>Before you start creating AppConfig artifacts, we recommend you
identify configuration data in your code that you want to dynamically manage using
AppConfig. Good examples include feature flags or toggles, allow and
block lists, logging verbosity, service limits, and throttling rules, to name a
few.</p>
<p>If your configuration data already exists in the cloud, you can take advantage
of AppConfig validation, deployment, and extension features to further
streamline configuration data management.</p>
</dd>
<dt>2. Create an application namespace</dt>
<dd>
<p>To create a namespace, you create an AppConfig artifact called an
application. An application is simply an organizational construct like a
folder.</p>
</dd>
<dt>3. Create environments</dt>
<dd>
<p>For each AppConfig application, you define one or more environments.
An environment is a logical grouping of targets, such as applications in a
<code>Beta</code> or <code>Production</code> environment, Lambda functions,
or containers. You can also define environments for application subcomponents,
such as the <code>Web</code>, <code>Mobile</code>, and
<code>Back-end</code>.</p>
<p>You can configure Amazon CloudWatch alarms for each environment. The system monitors
alarms during a configuration deployment. If an alarm is triggered, the system
rolls back the configuration.</p>
</dd>
<dt>4. Create a configuration profile</dt>
<dd>
<p>A configuration profile includes, among other things, a URI that enables
AppConfig to locate your configuration data in its stored location
and a profile type. AppConfig supports two configuration profile types:
feature flags and freeform configurations. Feature flag configuration profiles
store their data in the AppConfig hosted configuration store and the URI
is simply <code>hosted</code>. For freeform configuration profiles, you can store
your data in the AppConfig hosted configuration store or any Amazon Web Services
service that integrates with AppConfig, as described in <a href="http://docs.aws.amazon.com/appconfig/latest/userguide/appconfig-free-form-configurations-creating.html">Creating
a free form configuration profile</a> in the the <i>AppConfig User Guide</i>.</p>
<p>A configuration profile can also include optional validators to ensure your
configuration data is syntactically and semantically correct. AppConfig
performs a check using the validators when you start a deployment. If any errors
are detected, the deployment rolls back to the previous configuration data.</p>
</dd>
<dt>5. Deploy configuration data</dt>
<dd>
<p>When you create a new deployment, you specify the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>An application ID</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>A configuration profile ID</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>A configuration version</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>An environment ID where you want to deploy the configuration data</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>A deployment strategy ID that defines how fast you want the changes to
take effect</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>When you call the <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/appconfig/2019-10-09/APIReference/API_StartDeployment.html">StartDeployment</a> API action, AppConfig performs the following
tasks:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>Retrieves the configuration data from the underlying data store by using
the location URI in the configuration profile.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Verifies the configuration data is syntactically and semantically correct
by using the validators you specified when you created your configuration
profile.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Caches a copy of the data so it is ready to be retrieved by your
application. This cached copy is called the <i>deployed
data</i>.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</dd>
<dt>6. Retrieve the configuration</dt>
<dd>
<p>You can configure AppConfig Agent as a local host and have the agent
poll AppConfig for configuration updates. The agent calls the <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/appconfig/2019-10-09/APIReference/API_appconfigdata_StartConfigurationSession.html">StartConfigurationSession</a> and <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/appconfig/2019-10-09/APIReference/API_appconfigdata_GetLatestConfiguration.html">GetLatestConfiguration</a> API actions and caches your configuration data
locally. To retrieve the data, your application makes an HTTP call to the
localhost server. AppConfig Agent supports several use cases, as
described in <a href="http://docs.aws.amazon.com/appconfig/latest/userguide/appconfig-retrieving-simplified-methods.html">Simplified
retrieval methods</a> in the the <i>AppConfig User
Guide</i>.</p>
<p>If AppConfig Agent isn't supported for your use case, you can
configure your application to poll AppConfig for configuration updates
by directly calling the <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/appconfig/2019-10-09/APIReference/API_appconfigdata_StartConfigurationSession.html">StartConfigurationSession</a> and <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/appconfig/2019-10-09/APIReference/API_appconfigdata_GetLatestConfiguration.html">GetLatestConfiguration</a> API actions. </p>
</dd>
</dl>
<p>This reference is intended to be used with the <a href="http://docs.aws.amazon.com/appconfig/latest/userguide/what-is-appconfig.html">AppConfig User
Guide</a>.</p>

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