The AWS CLI provides an easy-to-use command line interface to AWS and allows you to create powerful automation scripts. This presentation shows advanced techniques that open up new scenarios for using the AWS CLI. I demonstrate how to filter and transform service responses, how to chain and script commands, and explore new features in the AWS CLI.

1. aws cli
Deep dive into the aws
command line interface
John Varghese – Devops Architect at Yuzu
May 20, 2015

2. Pro Tip
• When starting a presentation
– Turn off notifications
– Quit iMessages
– Quit your IM
– Quit Outlook

3. Who is using it today?
• Please raise you hand

4. What is aws-cli?
• A unified tool
• It provides a consistent interface for
interacting with all parts of AWS

5. Installation
• Without brew (on *nix)
– Install python 2.x.
– Python 3.x will not work
– wget, unzip, execute awscli-bundle.zip
• With homebrew
– brew install awscli

6. aws help
• Shows you the basic meta parameters that are
independent of the actual service/command,
or sub command.
• These meta parameters are also called options

7. Command structure
aws [options] <command>
<subcommand> [parameters]

8. Some aws commands
• cloudformation
• configure
• ec2
• elb
• rds
• route53
• cloudwatch
• dynamodb
• elasticache
• redshift
• s3api
• And all the rest…

9. Got oh-my-zsh?
Add the plugin (awscli)
I just added it yesterday after all this
time. It is awesome!

10. Auto-complete
Both bash and zsh have auto-
complete for aws cli

11. When you run into issues
Use the option --debug

12. aws configure
~/.aws/config
~/.aws/credentials

13. AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
Use these Environment Variables to
override the configuration settings.
There are a half dozen such variables.

14. Output formats
• Json
• Text
• Table
• --output
• Demo command
– aws cloudformation list-
stack-resources --stack-
name yuzu-es-dev-stack

15. Parameters via json
• aws cloudformation list-stack-
resources --stack-name yuzu-es-
dev-stack --generate-cli-skeleton
• aws cloudformation list-stack-
resources --cli-input-json
file://x.json

16. --dry-run
Just validate the command
Also --no-dry-run
Default behaviour

17. describe-regions with --dry-run
aws ec2 describe-regions --generate-cli-
skeleton > x.json
aws ec2 describe-regions --cli-input-json
file://x.json
A contrived example

18. JMESpath
• A short diversion
• Visit JMESpath.org
• Iteration
• [0]
• [*]
• []
• ?
• Demo – python syntax
– Try out some of the
examples on the tutorial

19. --query
Use this to filter the results.
Demo commands on following slides

20. Filtering the results
• aws ec2 describe-volumes
– Leverage head -10
• aws ec2 describe-volumes --query
'Volumes[0]’
• aws ec2 describe-volumes --query
'Volumes[*].{ID:VolumeId,AZ:AvailabilityZone,
Size:Size}'

21. Filtering results some more
• Chained keys such as
key1.key2[0].key3
• Attachments[0].InstanceId
• aws ec2 describe-volumes --query
'Volumes[*].{ID:VolumeId,InstanceId:Attachm
ents[0].InstanceId,AZ:AvailabilityZone,Size:Siz
e}’

22. Filtering multiple elements
• Use the list notation: [key1,
key2]
• aws ec2 describe-volumes --query
'Volumes[*].[VolumeId,
Attachments[0].InstanceId, AvailabilityZone,
Size]'

23. Filter by value of a field
• Use the JMESPath "?"
operator
• Note the backticks
• aws ec2 describe-volumes --query
'Volumes[?AvailabilityZone==`us-east-1d`]'