No matter how you like to participate in developer communities, Pulumi wants to meet you there. If you want to meet other Pulumi users to share use-cases and best practices, contribute code or documentation, see us at an event, or just tell a story about something cool you did with Pulumi, you are part of our community.

Pulumi Community

```import * as aws from "@pulumi/aws";
import * as pulumi from "@pulumi/pulumi";

const config = new pulumi.Config();

export interface WorkerLaunchTemplateArgs {
    stack: pulumi.Input&lt;string&gt;;
    instanceType: string;
    vpcSecurityGroupIds: pulumi.Output&lt;any&gt;[];
    userData: pulumi.Output&lt;string&gt;;
    ami: pulumi.Input&lt;string&gt;;
}

export default class WorkerLaunchTemplate extends pulumi.ComponentResource {

    launchTemplateId;

    constructor(name: string, args: WorkerLaunchTemplateArgs, opts?: pulumi.ResourceOptions) {

        super("pkg:index:WorkerLaunchTemplate", name, {}, opts);

        const launchTemplate = new aws.ec2.LaunchTemplate(`${args.stack}-${name}`, {
            imageId: args.ami,
            instanceType: args.instanceType,
            userData: Buffer.from(`${args.userData}`, 'utf8').toString('base64'),
            vpcSecurityGroupIds: args.vpcSecurityGroupIds,
            tagSpecifications: [{
                resourceType: "instance",
                tags: {
                    Name: `${args.stack}-${name}`
                },
            }],

        });

        this.launchTemplateId = launchTemplate.id;
    }

}```

Let me know what you guys think. I've had similar issues before and worked around them by refactoring some code but nothing I try here seems to work.

`args.userData` is an `Output&lt;string&gt;` so you cannot treat it like a string. Similarly to a `Promise`, you can only access its string value in a callback function within the `apply` method (`sort of like Promise's `then` method)
```userData: args.userData.apply(userData =&gt; Buffer.from(userData, 'utf8').toString('base64'),```

awesome that worked Mike! Thanks so much. I did something similar (though not inline) earlier and I had thought it didn't work but now I wonder if I just forgot to check the latest version in console :tired_face:

<https://leebriggs.co.uk/blog/2021/05/09/pulumi-apply>

thanks jaxx, I've gotten my head around what Pulumi _wants_ to do the past few weeks, I just couldn't quite figure out what I was doing wrong with the Buffer func here. I did something similar for my container definitions earlier in the week`.apply(([dbConnection, ...]) =&gt; JSON.stringify(...)` I probably should of referred back there.

Thanks for the help, really do appreciate it.

<@UCWG26BH7> thanks for the clarifications here, they helped me out this week. I'm actually learning typescript for the first time through pulumi (zero JS experience either) so I often struggle to even know what I'm supposed to google lol