Quickstart

Install the Altostra Extension from the Visual Studio Marketplace or the terminal:

code --install-extension Altostra.altostra

Left Side Panel:

The left side panel contains all types of AWS resources that you can add to your Altostra project.

Templates:

Templates are pre-made projects of common designs. You can edit the project and extend it to fit your requirements and deploy it easily. To use a template you just need to select the template that you want, and all of the project resources will be added to the editor automatically.

Existing Resources:

Existing resources are used for resources that you've already added to your AWS account and you now want to connect to your Altostra project. You just need to select the type of the resource, name it and add the relevant identifier of the resource from your AWS account. After adding the resource you can use the supported connections to connect it to other resources in your Altostra project.

Resources:

The rest of the resources in the side panel are resources that you can add directly to the editor. They are grouped by their types - for example, the "Database" tab contains all of the supported databases resources like RDS, DynamoDB, etc. You can also use the search box to look for the resource that you want to add. After adding the resources to your Altostra project, when you'll deploy the project, the resources will be added to you AWS account.

Top Menu Bar:

• Submenu
  • Globals - Show and edit the Global Environment Variables of the project:

• Login button - login to your Altostra account using Github/Bitbucket/GitLab:

  

• Logout button - logout of your Altostra account.

• Docs button - takes you to the Altostra Docs website, where you can see tutorials, learn how to use the Altostra CLI and more:

  

• Watch Demo button deprecated - takes you to Altostra Editor Youtube demo video.

• Project button - takes you to your current project page in the Altostra Web Console:

  

Let's add some resources in order to see how to use the other buttons:

• Now we can use the select, undo, redo, copy, paste and delete buttons:

  

• Export button - export your project to CloudFormation:

  

• Download button - you can download your design as a PNG file:

  

• Recommendations button - this button will show you recommended actions for your resources.
  Let's replace the S3 bucket with DocumentDB resource in order to see a recommendation:

  

Additional Options:

• You can see in which account you are currently working by clicking on the person icon on the left side menu: