An error occurred: AppSyncNestedStack - Template format error: Outputs count 61 is greater than max allowed 60.

[bhargavgoli]

I got this error because the AppSyncNestedStack outputs are increased to >60, and it will increase day by day, as the backend is got increased.

AWS cloudformation has a limit of outputs upto 60. Can you please help me how can remove outputs on the nestedstack.

The below is the error log:

bash-3.2# sls deploy
AppSync Plugin: GraphQl schema valid
Serverless: Packaging service...
Serverless: Excluding development dependencies...
Serverless: [serverless-plugin-split-stacks]: Summary: 181 resources migrated in to 6 nested stacks
Serverless: [serverless-plugin-split-stacks]: Resources per stack:
Serverless: [serverless-plugin-split-stacks]: - (root): 180
Serverless: [serverless-plugin-split-stacks]: - 1NestedStack: 2
Serverless: [serverless-plugin-split-stacks]: - APINestedStack: 11
Serverless: [serverless-plugin-split-stacks]: - AppSyncNestedStack: 62
Serverless: [serverless-plugin-split-stacks]: - AppSyncResolverNestedStack: 95
Serverless: [serverless-plugin-split-stacks]: - PermissionsNestedStack: 10
Serverless: [serverless-plugin-split-stacks]: - PoliciesNestedStack: 1
Serverless: Uploading CloudFormation file to S3...
Serverless: Uploading artifacts...
Serverless: Uploading service appsync.zip file to S3 (27.03 MB)...
Serverless: Validating template...
Serverless: Updating Stack...
Serverless: Checking Stack update progress...
..............................................................................................................
Serverless: Operation failed!
Serverless: View the full error output: https://us-east-1.console.aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/home?region=us-east-1#/stack/detail?stackId=arn%3Aaws%3Acloudformation%3Aus-east-1%3A884743863304%3Astack%2Fappsync-alpha%2Fbe914050-3dfa-11ea-94ad-0af228e676ce

Serverless Error ---------------------------------------

An error occurred: AppSyncNestedStack - Template format error: Outputs count 61 is greater than max allowed 60.

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Your Environment Information ---------------------------
Operating System: darwin
Node Version: 12.13.1
Framework Version: 1.61.0
Plugin Version: 3.2.7
SDK Version: 2.2.1
Components Core Version: 1.1.2
Components CLI Version: 1.4.0

[morficus]

@bhargavgoli This is actually not an issue with the appsync-plugin, but something that needs to be addressed in the split-stack plugin.

There is an open issue about it on that repo: dougmoscrop/serverless-plugin-split-stacks#91

I ran in to the same issue and was able to fiddle with the stacks-map.js file in order to come up with a temporary workaround.

[Mudassir-23]

I also ran into the same issue. When I did a little debugging I found cloud formation stacks work like functions with outputs from one stack passed as parameters for others. There is a hard limit on this parameter/output count and it is 60. Further, every API created has 4-5 resources. So, I had to find a better approach for splitting stacks through stacks-map.js. I tried grouping by logical groups like logs, functions with this I hit the limit again. Here is how I could achieve this, a new stack for every module in the application. With this, I will able to have 200 such modules and 200 resources in each module. Which is more than sufficient for me. hope it helps others.

module.exports = (resource, logicalId) => {
  logicalId = logicalId.toLowerCase();
  if (logicalId.includes('graphqlapi') || logicalId.includes('graphqlapikeydefault') || logicalId.includes('graphqlschema')) return { destination: 'AppSyncMeta', allowSuffix: true };
  else if (logicalId.includes('dashboard')) return { destination: 'Dashboard', allowSuffix: true };
  else if (logicalId.includes('customer')) return { destination: 'Customer', allowSuffix: true };
  else if (!logicalId.includes('serverless') && !logicalId.includes('lambdalayer') && !logicalId.startsWith('iamrolelambdaexecution')) return { destination: 'Misc', allowSuffix: true };
};

I have also written an informational post on the same here: https://medium.com/faun/overcoming-cloud-formation-limit-hurdles-with-the-serverless-framework-and-app-sync-4ed91d4ffee9

[sid88in]

As @morficus said, this isn't coming from this plugin. The plugin doesn't emit any
CloudFormation Outputs and doesn't create nested stacks — it merges its resources into your
single stack. The 60-output limit you're hitting is a CloudFormation limit on the cross-stack
Outputs that serverless-plugin-split-stacks generates when it moves resources into nested
stacks (tracked in dougmoscrop/serverless-plugin-split-stacks#91).

Short term: the stacks-map.js regrouping @Mudassir-23 and @morficus described is the way to
stay under the limit.

Longer term, if the real goal is splitting a large AppSync API across stacks, that's being
worked on natively in #647 (the apiId / multi-stack effort) — which targets exactly this
resource/nested-stack-limit pain and is a better fit than layering split-stacks on top.

Closing as out of scope for this plugin. Thanks all.