Command line options in the AWS CLI

In the AWS CLI, command line options are global parameters you can use to override the default configuration settings, any corresponding profile setting, or environment variable setting for that single command. You can't use command line options to directly specify credentials, although you can specify which profile to use.

How to use command line options

Most command line options are simple strings, such as the profile name profile1 in the following example:

$ aws s3 ls --profile profile1
amzn-s3-demo-bucket1
amzn-s3-demo-bucket2
...

Each option that takes an argument requires a space or equals sign (=) separating the argument from the option name. If the argument value is a string that contains a space, you must use quotation marks around the argument. For details on argument types and formatting for parameters, see Specifying parameter values in the AWS CLI.

AWS CLI supported global command line options

In the AWS CLI you can use the following command line options to override the default configuration settings, any corresponding profile setting, or environment variable setting for that single command.

--ca-bundle <string>

Specifies the certificate authority (CA) certificate bundle to use when verifying SSL certificates.

If defined, this option overrides the value for the profile setting ca_bundle and the AWS_CA_BUNDLE environment variable.

--cli-auto-prompt

Enables auto-prompt mode for a single command. As the following examples show, you can specify it at any point.

$ aws --cli-auto-prompt
$ aws dynamodb --cli-auto-prompt
$ aws dynamodb describe-table --cli-auto-prompt

This option overrides the aws_cli_auto_prompt environment variable and the cli_auto_prompt profile setting.

For information on the AWS CLI version 2 auto-prompt feature, see Enabling and using command prompts in the AWS CLI.

--cli-binary-format

Specifies how the AWS CLI version 2 interprets binary input parameters. It can be one of the following values:

• base64 – This is the default value. An input parameter that is typed as a binary large object (BLOB) accepts a base64-encoded string. To pass true binary content, put the content in a file and provide the file's path and name with the fileb:// prefix as the parameter's value. To pass base64-encoded text contained in a file, provide the file's path and name with the file:// prefix as the parameter's value.

• raw-in-base64-out – Default for the AWS CLI version 1. If the setting's value is raw-in-base64-out, files referenced using the file:// prefix is read as text and then the AWS CLI attempts to encode it to binary.

This overrides the cli_binary_format file configuration setting.

$ aws lambda invoke \
    --cli-binary-format raw-in-base64-out \
    --function-name my-function \
    --invocation-type Event \
    --payload '{ "name": "Bob" }' \
    response.json

If you reference a binary value in a file using the fileb:// prefix notation, the AWS CLI always expects the file to contain raw binary content and does not attempt to convert the value.

If you reference a binary value in a file using the file:// prefix notation, the AWS CLI handles the file according to the current cli_binary_format setting. If that setting's value is base64 (the default when not explicitly set), the AWS CLI expects the file to contain base64-encoded text. If that setting's value is raw-in-base64-out, the AWS CLI expects the file to contain raw binary content.

--cli-connect-timeout <integer>

Specifies the maximum socket connect time in seconds. If the value is set to zero (0), the socket connect waits indefinitely (is blocking) and doesn't timeout.

--cli-read-timeout <integer>

Specifies the maximum socket read time in seconds. If the value is set to zero (0) the socket read waits indefinitely (is blocking) and doesn't timeout.

--color <string>

Specifies support for color output. Valid values are on, off, and auto. The default value is auto.

--debug

A Boolean switch that enables debug logging. The AWS CLI by default provides cleaned up information regarding any successes or failures regarding command outcomes in the command output. The --debug option provides the full Python logs. This includes additional stderr diagnostic information about the operation of the command that can be useful when troubleshooting why a command provides unexpected results. To easily view debug logs, we suggest sending the logs to a file to more easily search the information. You can do this by using one of the following.

To send only the stderr diagnostic information, append 2> debug.txt where debug.txt is the name you want to use for your debug file:

$ aws servicename commandname options --debug 2> debug.txt

To send both the output and stderr diagnostic information, append &> debug.txt where debug.txt is the name you want to use for your debug file:

$ aws servicename commandname options --debug &> debug.txt

--endpoint-url <string>

Specifies the URL to send the request to. For most commands, the AWS CLI automatically determines the URL based on the selected service and the specified AWS Region. However, some commands require that you specify an account-specific URL. You can also configure some AWS services to host an endpoint directly within your private VPC, which might then need to be specified.

The following command example uses a custom Amazon S3 endpoint URL.

$ aws s3 ls --endpoint-url http://localhost:4567

Endpoint configuration settings are located in multiple places, such as the system or user environment variables, local AWS configuration files, or explicitly declared on the command line as a parameter. The AWS CLI endpoint configuration settings take precedence in the following order:

1. The --endpoint-url command line option.

2. If enabled, the AWS_IGNORE_CONFIGURED_ENDPOINT_URLS global endpoint environment variable or profile setting ignore_configure_endpoint_urls to ignore custom endpoints.

3. The value provided by a service-specific environment variable AWS_ENDPOINT_URL_<SERVICE>, such as AWS_ENDPOINT_URL_DYNAMODB.

4. The values provided by the AWS_USE_DUALSTACK_ENDPOINT, AWS_USE_FIPS_ENDPOINT, and AWS_ENDPOINT_URL environment variables.

5. The service-specific endpoint value provided by the endpoint_url setting within a services section of the shared config file.

6. The value provided by the endpoint_url setting within a profile of the shared config file.

7. use_dualstack_endpoint, use_fips_endpoint, and endpoint_url settings.

8. Any default endpoint URL for the respective AWS service is used last. For a list of the standard service endpoints available in each Region, see AWS Regions and Endpoints in the Amazon Web Services General Reference.

--no-cli-auto-prompt

Disables auto-prompt mode for a single command.

$ aws dynamodb describe-table --table-name Table1 --no-cli-auto-prompt

This option overrides the aws_cli_auto_prompt environment variable and the cli_auto_prompt profile setting.

For information on the AWS CLI version 2 auto-prompt feature, see Enabling and using command prompts in the AWS CLI.

--no-cli-pager

A Boolean switch that disables using a pager for the output of the command.

--no-paginate

A Boolean switch that disables the multiple calls the automatically AWS CLI makes to receive all command results that creates pagination of the output. This means only the first page of your output is displayed.

--no-sign-request

A Boolean switch that disables signing the HTTP requests to the AWS service endpoint. This prevents credentials from being loaded.

--no-verify-ssl

By default, the AWS CLI uses SSL when communicating with AWS services. For each SSL connection and call, the AWS CLI verifies the SSL certificates. Using this option overrides the default behavior of verifying SSL certificates.

Warning

This option is not best practice. If you use --no-verify-ssl, your traffic between your client and AWS services is no longer secured. This means your traffic is a security risk and vulnerable to man-in-the-middle exploits. If you're having issues with certificates, it's best to resolve those issues instead. For certificate troubleshooting steps, see SSL certificate errors.

--output <string>

Specifies the output format to use for this command. You can specify any of the following values:

• json – The output is formatted as a JSON string.

• yaml – The output is formatted as a YAML string.

• yaml-stream – The output is streamed and formatted as a YAML string. Streaming allows for faster handling of large data types.

• text – The output is formatted as multiple lines of tab-separated string values. This can be useful to pass the output to a text processor, like grep, sed, or awk.

• table – The output is formatted as a table using the characters +|- to form the cell borders. It typically presents the information in a "human-friendly" format that is much easier to read than the others, but not as programmatically useful.

--profile <string>

Specifies the named profile to use for this command. To set up additional named profiles, you can use the aws configure command with the --profile option.

$ aws configure --profile <profilename>

--query <string>

Specifies a JMESPath query to use in filtering the response data. For more information, see Filtering output in the AWS CLI.

--region <string>

Specifies which AWS Region to send this command's AWS request to. For a list of all of the Regions that you can specify, see AWS Regions and Endpoints in the Amazon Web Services General Reference.

--version

A Boolean switch that displays the current version of the AWS CLI program that is running.

Common uses of command line options

Common uses for command line options include checking your resources in multiple AWS Regions, and changing the output format for legibility or ease of use when scripting. In the following examples, we run the describe-instances command against each Region until we find which Region our instance is in.

$ aws ec2 describe-instances --output table --region us-west-1
-------------------
|DescribeInstances|
+-----------------+
$ aws ec2 describe-instances --output table --region us-west-2
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|                              DescribeInstances                             |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
||                               Reservations                               ||
|+-------------------------------------+------------------------------------+|
||  OwnerId                            |  012345678901                      ||
||  ReservationId                      |  r-abcdefgh                        ||
|+-------------------------------------+------------------------------------+|
|||                                Instances                               |||
||+------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+||
|||  AmiLaunchIndex        |  0                                            |||
|||  Architecture          |  x86_64                                       |||
...