CDK split API Gateway stack into 2 small stacks

This is how we are doing it right now. We basically have multiple stack that share the same API Gateway class (RestApi)

class MultipleStackConstruct extends Construct {
  constructor(scope: Construct, id: string) {
    super(scope, id);

    // Main stack with shared components
    const commonStack = new CommonStack(
      scope,
      `common-stack`
    );

    // Module 1
    const moduleOneStack = new ModulOneStack(
      scope,
      `module-one`,
      {
        apiGatewayRestApi: commonStack.apiGatewayRestApi
      }
    );

    // Module 2, 3, etc.....
  }
}

This interface is used to pass the props to module stack:

export interface CommonProps extends cdk.StackProps {
  apiGatewayRestApi: apigw.RestApi;
}

The common module will create the API Gateway object:

export class CommonStack extends cdk.Stack {
  public readonly apiGatewayRestApi: apigw.RestApi;

  constructor(scope: cdk.Construct, id: string, props?: CommonProps) {
    super(scope, id, props);

    /******** SETUP API ********/
    this.apiGatewayRestApi = new apigw.RestApi(this, "MyAPI", {
      // Options here
    });
}

So the module stack itself will be something like this:

export class ModuleOneStack extends cdk.Stack {
  constructor(scope: cdk.Construct, id: string, props?: CommonProps) {
    super(scope, id, props);

    if (props && props.apiGatewayRestApi) {
      const apiGatewayRestApi = props.apiGatewayRestApi;

      // associate lambda with api gateway
    }
  }
}

In this case, we are using only one API Gateway with multiple Lambdas that are divided into multiple stack, because we've also encountered the limit problem.

There is a documentation from AWS that is doing the same thing using VPC: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/api/latest/docs/aws-ec2-readme.html#sharing-vpcs-between-stacks

Copy paste from my comment here: https://github.com/aws/aws-cdk/issues/1477#issuecomment-568652807

I think you can achieve your goal by separating resources into smaller stacks. It doesn't seem like you need cross stack references or nested stacks.

Here is an example (in Python) with 295 resources split between two stacks.

#!/usr/bin/env python3

from aws_cdk import core

from lambda_api.lambda_api_stack import APIStack
from lambda_api.lambda_api_stack import LambdasStack


app = core.App()
lambdas_stack = LambdasStack(app, 'lambdasstack')
APIStack(app, 'apistack', lambdas=lambdas_stack.lambdas)


app.synth()

from aws_cdk import (
    aws_apigateway as apigateway,
    aws_lambda as _lambda,
    aws_s3 as s3,
    core
)


class LambdasStack(core.Stack):

    @property
    def lambdas(self):
        return self._lambdas

    def __init__(self, scope: core.Construct, id: str, **kwargs) -> None:
        super().__init__(scope, id, **kwargs)

        self._lambdas = list()
        for i in range(48):
            handler = _lambda.Function(
                self, f'Handler_{i}',
                function_name=f'Handler_{i}',
                runtime=_lambda.Runtime.PYTHON_3_8,
                code=_lambda.Code.from_asset('resources'),
                handler='handler.main'
            )
            self._lambdas.append(handler)


class APIStack(core.Stack):

    def __init__(self, scope: core.Construct, id: str, lambdas: list,
            **kwargs) -> None:
        super().__init__(scope, id, **kwargs)

        api = apigateway.RestApi(
            self, 'lambdas-api',
            rest_api_name='Lambdas Service',
            description='This service serves lambdas.'
        )

        for i in range(len(lambdas)):
            get_lambda_integration = apigateway.LambdaIntegration(
                lambdas[i],
                request_templates={
                    'application/json':
                    '{ "statusCode": "200" }'
                }
            )
            model = api.root.add_resource(f'Resource_{i}')
            model.add_method('GET', get_lambda_integration)

For this example, the API resource + Lambda integrations generate the most resources. Here is an outline of the resources created.

97 resources are created in lambdasstack.

• 1 AWS::CDK::Metadata
• 48 x 2 resources
  • 1 AWS::Lambda::Function
  • 1 AWS::IAM::Role

198 resources are created in apistack.

• 1 AWS::CDK::Metadata
• 1 AWS::ApiGateway::Account
• 1 AWS::IAM::Role
• 1 AWS::ApiGateway::RestApi
• 1 AWS::ApiGateway::Deployment
• 1 AWS::ApiGateway::Stage
• 48 x 4 resources
  • 1 AWS::ApiGateway::Resource
  • 1 AWS::ApiGateway::Method
  • 2 AWS::IAM::Role