The mysterious error that doesn’t really explain what’s going on with parameter-overrides
I got the above error while trying to execute a CloudFormation template. Actually I got it a couple of times and by the second time I got it I already forgot what caused it.
Wasted time. Wasted time…please better error messages…
What happened the first time is that I was constructing a string for my parameter overrides in a CLI call and inadvertently passed in an empty string, so the parameter overrides were malformed.
How about an error that says exactly that:
The parameter overrides value malformed. It should be in this form ["x=y","z=q","b=d”]
The template actually executed so I though the error was in my template code and wasted time on that. I always print out my parameters due to a myriad of cryptic error messages related to parameter overrides so I can verify they are correct, so I finally spotted what I was doing wrong.
By the way there are multiple ways to pass in parameter overrides and I’ve had best luck with the above format — especially when there are spaces in one of the parameter values.
The second time I got this error I actually thought I was done with my code. Somehow I inadvertently replaced all my parameters with the number 1. Don’t ask me how. But once again I got this nonsensical error:
‘int’ object is not iterable
This time the error was only on the command line. The template never executed. Just this:
So how was I supposed to know this was not an error in my template code but with the CLI call? A little hint would be nice.
Now that I’ve written this down in a blog post hopefully I will remember what the problem is next time I see it.
Update:
Even more bizarre…is that when I finished writing this post and went back and printed out my parameters to see what is going on and without making any other changes the code worked again. I don’t know how parameter-overrides got set to 1 or how it got fixed. Multi-threaded coding error? Not sure. Will have to see if it happens again.
Teri Radichel
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