How to get username in AWS Cloudformation template file?

Question

I have resources defined in my Cloudformation template file with tags defined like so:

  "Properties": {
    "Tags": [
      { "Key": "Environment", "Value": {"Ref": "Environment"}},
      { "Key": "Hello", "Value": "World"}
    ]
  }

My IAM username is my.name. I would like to add a key named Creator to the Tags property with value my username (my.name). Moreover, I need this value to reflect the username of whoever runs this Cloudformation template. How can I do it?

Answer 1

I am not aware of any way of referencing the IAM username directly from the template JSON.

However, you can use get-user to get the username (either using the CLI or one of the SDKs), and then pass it on to CloudFormation as a parameter, or, if you are creating the template JSON programmatically, just insert it directly.