AWS Certificate Manager Construct Library

AWS CDK v1 has reached End-of-Support on 2023-06-01. This package is no longer being updated, and users should migrate to AWS CDK v2.

For more information on how to migrate, see the Migrating to AWS CDK v2 guide.

AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) handles the complexity of creating, storing, and renewing public and private SSL/TLS X.509 certificates and keys that protect your AWS websites and applications. ACM certificates can secure singular domain names, multiple specific domain names, wildcard domains, or combinations of these. ACM wildcard certificates can protect an unlimited number of subdomains.

This package provides Constructs for provisioning and referencing ACM certificates which can be used with CloudFront and ELB.

After requesting a certificate, you will need to prove that you own the domain in question before the certificate will be granted. The CloudFormation deployment will wait until this verification process has been completed.

Because of this wait time, when using manual validation methods, it's better to provision your certificates either in a separate stack from your main service, or provision them manually and import them into your CDK application.

Note: There is a limit on total number of ACM certificates that can be requested on an account and region within a year. The default limit is 2000, but this limit may be (much) lower on new AWS accounts. See https://docs.aws.amazon.com/acm/latest/userguide/acm-limits.html for more information.

DNS validation

DNS validation is the preferred method to validate domain ownership, as it has a number of advantages over email validation. See also Validate with DNS in the AWS Certificate Manager User Guide.

If Amazon Route 53 is your DNS provider for the requested domain, the DNS record can be created automatically:

const myHostedZone = new route53.HostedZone(this, 'HostedZone', {
  zoneName: 'example.com',
});
new acm.Certificate(this, 'Certificate', {
  domainName: 'hello.example.com',
  validation: acm.CertificateValidation.fromDns(myHostedZone),
});

If Route 53 is not your DNS provider, the DNS records must be added manually and the stack will not complete creating until the records are added.

new acm.Certificate(this, 'Certificate', {
  domainName: 'hello.example.com',
  validation: acm.CertificateValidation.fromDns(), // Records must be added manually
});

When working with multiple domains, use the CertificateValidation.fromDnsMultiZone():

const exampleCom = new route53.HostedZone(this, 'ExampleCom', {
  zoneName: 'example.com',
});
const exampleNet = new route53.HostedZone(this, 'ExampleNet', {
  zoneName: 'example.net',
});

const cert = new acm.Certificate(this, 'Certificate', {
  domainName: 'test.example.com',
  subjectAlternativeNames: ['cool.example.com', 'test.example.net'],
  validation: acm.CertificateValidation.fromDnsMultiZone({
    'test.example.com': exampleCom,
    'cool.example.com': exampleCom,
    'test.example.net': exampleNet,
  }),
});

Email validation

Email-validated certificates (the default) are validated by receiving an email on one of a number of predefined domains and following the instructions in the email.

See Validate with Email in the AWS Certificate Manager User Guide.

new acm.Certificate(this, 'Certificate', {
  domainName: 'hello.example.com',
  validation: acm.CertificateValidation.fromEmail(), // Optional, this is the default
});

Cross-region Certificates

ACM certificates that are used with CloudFront -- or higher-level constructs which rely on CloudFront -- must be in the us-east-1 region. The DnsValidatedCertificate construct exists to facilitate creating these certificates cross-region. This resource can only be used with Route53-based DNS validation.

declare const myHostedZone: route53.HostedZone;
new acm.DnsValidatedCertificate(this, 'CrossRegionCertificate', {
  domainName: 'hello.example.com',
  hostedZone: myHostedZone,
  region: 'us-east-1',
});

Requesting private certificates

AWS Certificate Manager can create private certificates issued by Private Certificate Authority (PCA). Validation of private certificates is not necessary.

import * as acmpca from '@aws-cdk/aws-acmpca';

new acm.PrivateCertificate(this, 'PrivateCertificate', {
  domainName: 'test.example.com',
  subjectAlternativeNames: ['cool.example.com', 'test.example.net'], // optional
  certificateAuthority: acmpca.CertificateAuthority.fromCertificateAuthorityArn(this, 'CA',
    'arn:aws:acm-pca:us-east-1:123456789012:certificate-authority/023077d8-2bfa-4eb0-8f22-05c96deade77'),
});

Importing

If you want to import an existing certificate, you can do so from its ARN:

const arn = 'arn:aws:...';
const certificate = acm.Certificate.fromCertificateArn(this, 'Certificate', arn);

Sharing between Stacks

To share the certificate between stacks in the same CDK application, simply pass the Certificate object between the stacks.

Metrics

The DaysToExpiry metric is available via the metricDaysToExpiry method for all certificates. This metric is emitted by AWS Certificates Manager once per day until the certificate has effectively expired.

An alarm can be created to determine whether a certificate is soon due for renewal ussing the following code:

import * as cloudwatch from '@aws-cdk/aws-cloudwatch';

declare const myHostedZone: route53.HostedZone;
const certificate = new acm.Certificate(this, 'Certificate', {
  domainName: 'hello.example.com',
  validation: acm.CertificateValidation.fromDns(myHostedZone),
});
certificate.metricDaysToExpiry().createAlarm(this, 'Alarm', {
  comparisonOperator: cloudwatch.ComparisonOperator.LESS_THAN_THRESHOLD,
  evaluationPeriods: 1,
  threshold: 45, // Automatic rotation happens between 60 and 45 days before expiry
});