AWS Toolkit for VS Code!

The AWS Toolkit is an open-source plugin to easily create, debug and deploy your apps on AWS. With the AWS Toolkit, you can easily do your operations from the IDE.

First of all, you need to download & install the Visual Studio Code.

And then, at the left bar, find the Activity Bar and search for the AWS Toolkit, install the extension and reload the VS Code. After these steps, you have one more step to do. Credentials!

PAY ATTENTION! At the AWS side, I can say the credentials are the most important things! These are your secrets, you must protect them. But more important thing is MFA. Once you create AWS account, activate MFA and then use your account.

Getting Access Keys

Go to AWS console at: https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/

Find the Users at the left, then Click Add Users. This will navigate you to 3 step user creation. First step is User details,

Second step is for the permissions. The important one is the User groups!

You can create a User group with the Create group button, you can add AdministratorAccess for now but it’s not recommended. Because if you add this, you can do everything with this User. It may be costly. It’s recommended to customize the permissions for the services that users will use. You can find policy, or even you can Create policy in your own.

Last step is review and creation, click Next then create a user. It’ll navigate to Users page, you’ll see the user that you just created. Click the user and go to Security credentials tab.

You can make more secure your user with this page, before start to use AWS, you should activate MFA, it’ll feel you more secure.

Assign MFA Device

Click Assign MFA device, choose Authenticator app and click next. You can also choose one of the Security Key or Hardware TOTP token options, I’ll continue with Authenticator app.

It’ll suggest you authenticator apps, navigate to assign and done, you activated the MFA! Then we came to Access key creation.

Create Access Key

After you click the Create access key, you’ll have 3 steps. At the first step, AWS will advice alternatives for different use cases. We’ll use AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio Code, then choose this one.

Second step is optional, you can skip now.

At the third step, your access credentials’ll be created. You should read best practices to manage AWS access keys.

You must not share these credentials with anyone, even with Amazon, Amazon never asks for the credentials.

Download your file and keep them at the secure place. If you lose or forget the credentials, you must delete an old pair and create new pair.

Creating Profile at Visual Studio Code

Go to Visual Studio Code, open terminal with CMD+Shift+P and find below.

Follow below steps and create your profile with your own credentials

That’s all! After these configurations, you’re all set to use AWS tools with AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio Code.

I choose Ireland(eu-west-1) region and I see the services that I can use now.

Hope it’ll help you to use AWS Toolkit. You can reach me out if you need help, I will gladly help!