No Outputs section in cloudformation template

Question

In cloudformation template, there is an outputs sections which is used for talking to cross-stack.

Is that correct to say that this part should not exist if there is only one stack we are creating in one AWS account?

Answer 1

The outputs section can be used for cross-stack references with Export and Fn::ImportValue. It can also be used for general output for the user. A few examples:

1. Admin URL like https://123.123.123.123/admin
2. Credentials for a newly created user
3. Identifier for any of the resources for easy access
4. An attribute of a resource like EC2 instance IP address