The AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) is a powerful tool for creating infrastructure as code (IAC) in AWS. It allows developers to use a high-level programming language to define their infrastructure, rather than writing low-level templates in JSON or YAML. One popular language for writing CDK code is TypeScript, a strict superset of JavaScript that adds strong typing and other features.

In this article, we'll go through the process of getting started with the AWS CDK and TypeScript.

First, you'll need to have an AWS account and have the AWS CLI set up on your machine. You'll also need to have Node.js and the TypeScript compiler installed.

Install the latest version of the AWS CLI from here.

After installing the AWS CLI, create an IAM user in the AWS Console. Give it a user name and check the box for Access key — Programmatic access. Select Attach existing policies directly and select AdministratorAccess: click next until you see Success and the access keys.

Use configure command and enter the information from the IAM user screen:

aws configure

You can check if you have these dependencies by running the following commands:

aws --version
node -v
tsc -v

Next, you'll need to install the AWS CDK. You can do this by running the following command:

npm install -g aws-cdk

Run the following command to verify installation and check the version number of the AWS CDK.

cdk --version

Once the AWS CDK is installed, you can create a new project by running the following command:

Go to your terminal and run the following commands

mkdir learn-aws-cdk
cd learn-aws-cdk

cdk init --language=typescript

This will create a new directory with a basic project structure and some sample code. The cdk.json file contains some basic configurations for the project, such as the runtime and the output directory. The tsconfig.json file contains the TypeScript compiler configuration.

The main entry point for your CDK app is the bin/cdk.ts file, which exports the App class. You can use this class to define your CDK stack and add resources to it. The lib/cdk-stack.ts file exports the CdkStack class, which is a basic example of a CDK stack.

To deploy your stack, you will use the cdk deploy command. You can also use another command such as cdk synth or cdk diff for doing a dry run or seeing the difference in your deployments respectively.

You can now start writing your TypeScript code to define your infrastructure. You can use the AWS CDK's built-in classes to create resources, or you can use the AWS CDK's low-level constructs to create your custom resources.

Here is a simple example of how to use the CDK to create an S3 bucket:

import * as cdk from 'aws-cdk-lib';
import * as s3 from '@aws-cdk/aws-s3';

export class MyStack extends cdk.Stack {
  constructor(scope: cdk.Construct, id: string, props?: cdk.StackProps) {
    super(scope, id, props);

    new s3.Bucket(this, 'MyBucket', {
      bucketName: 'my-bucket'
    });
  }
}

In the example above, we import the necessary dependencies and then define a class MyStack that creates an S3 bucket. You can deploy the stack using the cdk deploy command.

Getting started with AWS CDK and TypeScript can be challenging, but once you get the hang of it, you'll find that it's a powerful tool for creating and managing your infrastructure in AWS.

Note that this article is for a basic explanation of AWS CDK and is not covering the topics of security, deployment patterns or best practices.