Export xxxxx cannot be deleted error when removing Restful API routes

[Cheng Huang]

Hi there,

I have a problem removing or updating routes in an imported API stack.

I use SST to build an API gateway and microservices in the backend. I love the live lambda, which saves heaps of time to build and debug lambda functions locally. 👍

The infrastructure is simple: there is one API stack file and a few service stack files, which use the exported API resource from the API stack.

The problem is when I remove or update any route in a service stack file, and deploy, I get an error message like: Export xxxxx cannot be deleted as it is in use by xxxxx.

---

Here is a quick demo to reproduce the issue:

1. In the API stack api-stack.ts, I set up the Restful API gateway:

import { ApiGatewayV1Api } from 'sst/constructs'

 const api = new ApiGatewayV1Api(stack, 'Api', {
    cdk: {
      restApi: {
        restApiName: 'demo-api',
      },
    },
  })

return { api }

2. In the Demo service stack file demo-service.ts, I added 2 routes to the API gateway:

import { use, StackContext } from 'sst/constructs'
import { ApiStack } from './api-gateway'

export function DemoServiceStack({ stack }: StackContext) {
  const { api } = use(ApiStack)
  api.addRoutes(stack, {
    'GET /demo-path':  'packages/functions/v1/demo-service/get.handler',
    'POST /demo-path':  'packages/functions/v1/demo-service/post.handler'
    })
})

3. In the sst.config.ts file, I added stacks:

import { SSTConfig } from 'sst'
import { ApiStack } from './stacks/api-gateway'
import { DemoServiceStack } from './stacks/demo-service'

export default {
  config(_input) {
    ...
  },
   stacks(app) {
    app
      .stack(ApiStack)
      .stackk(DemoServiceStace)
    }
}

Now I remove a route (e.g. 'GET /demo-path': 'packages/functions/v1/demo-service/get.handler', in the 2nd file above), I receive the error message below:

demo-service: Export demo-service:ExportsOutputFnGetAttLambdaGETv1xxxxxxxxxxxxxxCD5D cannot be deleted as it is in use by api-gateway

I understand why this error message happens, but I guess it was resolved when I found automatic export injection.

I was thinking about removing the reference, in this case, the api resource; however, I still need the other routes in the same file.

Please let me know if there is any setting I was not aware of or if there is a workaround that can fix this issue. I do love using SST to build serverless applications but not confident about using it in production in this case because I cannot delete or update a route in the API.

Thanks,

[Jay]

Yeah this is painful and not intuitive. It's partly why we are moving away from CDK and CloudFormation for our next version.

This specific issue I talk about it here: https://sst.dev/blog/moving-away-from-cdk.html#3-export-in-use