How can I quickly and effectively debug CloudFormation templates?

Question

CloudFormation is a powerful AWS offering that allows the programmatic creation of AWS resource stacks, such as the web tier of an application, a high performance computing

Answer 1

Late to the party but I might also add that it is worthwhile spending a bit of time configuring and learning your editor. I know that sounds laughably basic as an answer but try it.

In my case, with vim, I performed much better once I took some time installing json syntax plugins, and also (finally) understood folding techniques to navigate large CF files easily. Mine now suggests typos (commas where they shouldn't be etc) and the color highlighting saves a lot of time giving clear visual clues.

This might help mitigate syntax errors, but in-template logical errors are better fixed by other tools. Hopefully one day there will be a "preview" mode on CF.