Cloudwatch Dashboard error in Cloudformation

Question

I am trying to create cloudwatch dashboards in AWS system manager using JSON in cloudformation. I have a template in which there are a couple of lambda functions already running in the stack. I updated it as follows:

{
"AWSTemplateFormatVersion": "2010-09-09",
"Description": "The AWS CloudFormation template for deployment. Version 1.0",
"Mappings": {
  "SourceCode": {
    "General": {
      "S3Bucket": "solutions",
      "KeyPrefix": "connected-solution/latest"
    }
  }
},
"Resources": {
  "dashboard": {
    "Type": "AWS::CloudWatch::Dashboard",
    "Properties": {
      "DashboardName": "Dynamodb-LambdaDashboard-xxx",
      "DashboardBody": {
        "widgets": [
          {
            "type": "metric",
            "x": 0,
            "y": 0,
            "width": 12,
            "height": 7,
            "properties": {
              "metrics": [
                [
                  "AWS/DynamoDB",
                  "UserErrors"
                ]
              ],
              "view": "timeSeries",
              "stacked": false,
              "period": 300,
              "stat": "Sum",
              "region": "us-east-1"
            }
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

}

I am getting the following error when I try to update the stack:

Property validation failure: [Value of property {/DashboardBody} does not match type {String}]

Please advise. Let me know if there are any questions, Thank you,

Answer 1

DashboardBody should be string, not json object. You have to stringify (convert json object to string) your DashboardBody. For example:

{
"AWSTemplateFormatVersion": "2010-09-09",
"Description": "The AWS CloudFormation template for deployment. Version 1.0",
"Mappings": {
  "SourceCode": {
    "General": {
      "S3Bucket": "solutions",
      "KeyPrefix": "connected-solution/latest"
    }
  }
},
"Resources": {
  "dashboard": {
    "Type": "AWS::CloudWatch::Dashboard",
    "Properties": {
      "DashboardName": "Dynamodb-LambdaDashboard-xxx",
      "DashboardBody": "{\"widgets\":[{\"type\":\"metric\",\"x\":0,\"y\":0,\"width\":12,\"height\":7,\"properties\":{\"metrics\":[[\"AWS/DynamoDB\",\"UserErrors\"]],\"view\":\"timeSeries\",\"stacked\":false,\"period\":300,\"stat\":\"Sum\",\"region\":\"us-east-1\"}}]}"
    }
  }
}