Accessing help and resources for the AWS CLI
This topic describes how to access help content for the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI).
Topics
The built-in AWS CLI help command
You can get help with any command when using the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). To do so, simply type
help
at the end of a command name.
For example, the following command displays help for the general AWS CLI options and the available top-level commands.
$
aws help
The following command displays the available Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) specific commands.
$
aws ec2 help
The following example displays detailed help for the Amazon EC2 DescribeInstances
operation. The help includes descriptions of its input parameters, available filters, and what
is included as output. It also includes examples showing how to type common variations of the
command.
$
aws ec2 describe-instances help
The help for each command is divided into six sections:
- Name
-
The name of the command.
NAME describe-instances -
- Description
-
A description of the API operation that the command invokes.
DESCRIPTION Describes one or more of your instances. If you specify one or more instance IDs, Amazon EC2 returns information for those instances. If you do not specify instance IDs, Amazon EC2 returns information for all relevant instances. If you specify an instance ID that is not valid, an error is returned. If you specify an instance that you do not own, it is not included in the returned results. ...
- Synopsis
-
The basic syntax for using the command and its options. If an option is shown in square brackets, it's optional, has a default value, or has an alternative option that you can use.
SYNOPSIS describe-instances [--dry-run | --no-dry-run] [--instance-ids <value>] [--filters <value>] [--cli-input-json <value>] [--starting-token <value>] [--page-size <value>] [--max-items <value>] [--generate-cli-skeleton]
For example,
describe-instances
has a default behavior that describes all instances in the current account and AWS Region. You can optionally specify a list ofinstance-ids
to describe one or more instances;dry-run
is an optional Boolean flag that doesn't take a value. To use a Boolean flag, specify either shown value, in this case--dry-run
or--no-dry-run
. Likewise,--generate-cli-skeleton
doesn't take a value. If there are conditions on an option's use, they are described in theOPTIONS
section, or shown in the examples. - Options
-
A description of each of the options shown in the synopsis.
OPTIONS --dry-run | --no-dry-run (boolean) Checks whether you have the required permissions for the action, without actually making the request, and provides an error response. If you have the required permissions, the error response is DryRun- Operation . Otherwise, it is UnauthorizedOperation . --instance-ids (list) One or more instance IDs. Default: Describes all your instances. ...
- Examples
-
Examples showing the usage of the command and its options. If no example is available for a command or use case that you need, request one using the feedback link on this page, or in the AWS CLI command reference on the help page for the command.
EXAMPLES To describe an Amazon EC2 instance Command: aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-ids i-5203422c To describe all instances with the instance type m1.small Command: aws ec2 describe-instances --filters "Name=instance-type,Values=m1.small" To describe all instances with an Owner tag Command: aws ec2 describe-instances --filters "Name=tag-key,Values=Owner" ...
- Output
-
Descriptions of each of the fields and data types included in the response from AWS.
For
describe-instances
, the output is a list of reservation objects, each of which contains several fields and objects that contain information about the instances associated with it. This information comes from the API documentation for the reservation data type used by Amazon EC2.OUTPUT Reservations -> (list) One or more reservations. (structure) Describes a reservation. ReservationId -> (string) The ID of the reservation. OwnerId -> (string) The ID of the AWS account that owns the reservation. RequesterId -> (string) The ID of the requester that launched the instances on your behalf (for example, AWS Management Console or Auto Scaling). Groups -> (list) One or more security groups. (structure) Describes a security group. GroupName -> (string) The name of the security group. GroupId -> (string) The ID of the security group. Instances -> (list) One or more instances. (structure) Describes an instance. InstanceId -> (string) The ID of the instance. ImageId -> (string) The ID of the AMI used to launch the instance. State -> (structure) The current state of the instance. Code -> (integer) The low byte represents the state. The high byte is an opaque internal value and should be ignored. ...
When the AWS CLI renders the output into JSON, it becomes an array of reservation objects, similar to the following example.
{ "Reservations": [ { "OwnerId": "012345678901", "ReservationId": "r-4c58f8a0", "Groups": [], "RequesterId": "012345678901", "Instances": [ { "Monitoring": { "State": "disabled" }, "PublicDnsName": "ec2-52-74-16-12.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com", "State": { "Code": 16, "Name": "running" }, ...
Each reservation object contains fields describing the reservation and an array of instance objects, each with its own fields (for example,
PublicDnsName
) and objects (for example,State
) that describe it.Windows users
You can pipe (|) the output of the help command to the
more
command to view the help file one page at a time. Press the space bar or PgDn to view more of the document, andq
to quit.C:\>
aws ec2 describe-instances help | more
AWS CLI reference guide
The help files contain links that cannot be viewed or navigated to from the command line.
You can view and interact with these links by using the online AWS CLI version 2 reference guide
API documentation
All commands in the AWS CLI correspond to requests made to an AWS service's public API.
Each service with a public API has an API reference that can be found on the service's home
page on the AWS Documentation
website
API Documentation Sections
-
Actions – Detailed information on each operation and its parameters (including constraints on length or content, and default values). It lists the errors that can occur for this operation. Each operation corresponds to a subcommand in the AWS CLI.
-
Data Types – Detailed information about structures that a command might require as a parameter, or return in response to a request.
-
Common Parameters – Detailed information about the parameters that are shared by all of action for the service.
-
Common Errors – Detailed information about errors that can be returned by any of the service's operations.
The name and availability of each section can vary, depending on the service.
Service-specific CLIs
Some services have a separate CLI that dates from before a single AWS CLI was created to work with all services. These service-specific CLIs have separate documentation that is linked from the service's documentation page. Documentation for service-specific CLIs do not apply to the AWS CLI.
Troubleshooting errors
For help diagnosing and fixing AWS CLI errors, see Troubleshooting errors for the AWS CLI.
Additional help
For additional help with your AWS CLI issues, visit the AWS CLI community