Setting the output format in the AWS CLI
This topic describes the different output formats for the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). The AWS CLI supports the following output formats:
yaml-stream – The output is streamed and formatted as aYAML 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, orawk.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.
How to select the output format
As explained in theconfiguration topic, you can specify the output format in three ways:
Using the
outputoption in a named profile in theconfigfile – The following example sets the default output format totext.[default]output=textUsing the
AWS_DEFAULT_OUTPUTenvironment variable – The following output sets the format totablefor the commands in this command line session until the variable is changed or the session ends. Using this environment variable overrides any value set in theconfigfile.$export AWS_DEFAULT_OUTPUT="table"Using the
--outputoption on the command line – The following example sets the output of only this one command tojson. Using this option on the command overrides any currently set environment variable or the value in theconfigfile.$aws swf list-domains --registration-status REGISTERED --output json
The output type you specify changes how the--query option operates:
If you specify
--output text, the output is paginatedbefore the--queryfilter is applied, and the AWS CLI runs the query once oneach page of the output. Due to this, the query includes the first matching element on each page which can result in unexpected extra output. To additionally filter the output, you can use other command line tools such asheadortail.If you specify
--output json,--output yaml, or--output yaml-streamthe output is completely processed as a single, native structure before the--queryfilter is applied. The AWS CLI runs the query only once against the entire structure, producing a filtered result that is then output.
JSON output format
JSON is the default output format of the AWS CLI. Most programming languages can easily decode JSON strings using built-in functions or with publicly available libraries. You can combine JSON output with the--query option in powerful ways to filter and format the AWS CLI JSON-formatted output.
For more advanced filtering that you might not be able to do with--query, you can considerjq, a command line JSON processor. You can download it and find the official tutorial athttp://stedolan.github.io/jq/.
The following is an example of JSON output.
$aws iam list-users --output json{ "Users": [{ "Path": "/", "UserName": "Admin", "UserId": "AIDA1111111111EXAMPLE", "Arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Admin", "CreateDate": "2014-10-16T16:03:09+00:00", "PasswordLastUsed": "2016-06-03T18:37:29+00:00" },{ "Path": "/backup/", "UserName": "backup-user", "UserId": "AIDA2222222222EXAMPLE", "Arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/backup/backup-user", "CreateDate": "2019-09-17T19:30:40+00:00" },{ "Path": "/", "UserName": "cli-user", "UserId": "AIDA3333333333EXAMPLE", "Arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/cli-user", "CreateDate": "2019-09-17T19:11:39+00:00" } ]}YAML output format
YAML is a good choice for handling the output programmatically with services and tools that emit or consumeYAML-formatted strings, such as AWS CloudFormation with its support forYAML-formatted templates.
For more advanced filtering that you might not be able to do with--query, you can consideryq, a command line YAML processor. You can downloadyq in theyq repository onGitHub.
The following is an example of YAML output.
$aws iam list-users --output yamlUsers:- Arn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Admin CreateDate: '2014-10-16T16:03:09+00:00' PasswordLastUsed: '2016-06-03T18:37:29+00:00' Path: / UserId: AIDA1111111111EXAMPLE UserName: Admin- Arn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/backup/backup-user CreateDate: '2019-09-17T19:30:40+00:00' Path: /backup/ UserId: AIDA2222222222EXAMPLE UserName: arq-45EFD6D1-CE56-459B-B39F-F9C1F78FBE19- Arn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/cli-user CreateDate: '2019-09-17T19:30:40+00:00' Path: / UserId: AIDA3333333333EXAMPLE UserName: cli-userYAML stream output format
Theyaml-stream format takes advantage of theYAML format while providing more responsive/faster viewing of large data sets by streaming the data to you. You can start viewing and using YAML data before the entire query downloads.
For more advanced filtering that you might not be able to do with--query, you can consideryq, a command line YAML processor. You can downloadyq in theyq repository onGitHub.
The following is an example ofyaml-stream output.
$aws iam list-users --output yaml-stream- IsTruncated: false Users: - Arn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Admin CreateDate: '2014-10-16T16:03:09+00:00' PasswordLastUsed: '2016-06-03T18:37:29+00:00' Path: / UserId: AIDA1111111111EXAMPLE UserName: Admin - Arn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/backup/backup-user CreateDate: '2019-09-17T19:30:40+00:00' Path: /backup/ UserId: AIDA2222222222EXAMPLE UserName: arq-45EFD6D1-CE56-459B-B39F-F9C1F78FBE19 - Arn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/cli-user CreateDate: '2019-09-17T19:30:40+00:00' Path: / UserId: AIDA3333333333EXAMPLE UserName: cli-userThe following is an example ofyaml-stream output in conjunction with using the--page-size parameter to paginate the streamed YAML content.
$aws iam list-users --output yaml-stream --page-size 2- IsTruncated: true Marker: ab1234cdef5ghi67jk8lmo9p/q012rs3t445uv6789w0x1y2z/345a6b78c9d00/1efgh234ij56klmno78pqrstu90vwxyx Users: - Arn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Admin CreateDate: '2014-10-16T16:03:09+00:00' PasswordLastUsed: '2016-06-03T18:37:29+00:00' Path: / UserId: AIDA1111111111EXAMPLE UserName: Admin - Arn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/backup/backup-user CreateDate: '2019-09-17T19:30:40+00:00' Path: /backup/ UserId: AIDA2222222222EXAMPLE UserName: arq-45EFD6D1-CE56-459B-B39F-F9C1F78FBE19- IsTruncated: false Users: - Arn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/cli-user CreateDate: '2019-09-17T19:30:40+00:00' Path: / UserId: AIDA3333333333EXAMPLE UserName: cli-userText output format
Thetext format organizes the AWS CLI output into tab-delimited lines. It works well with traditional Unix text tools such asgrep,sed, andawk, and the text processing performed by PowerShell.
Thetext output format follows the basic structure shown below. The columns are sorted alphabetically by the corresponding key names of the underlying JSON object.
IDENTIFIER sorted-column1 sorted-column2IDENTIFIER2 sorted-column1 sorted-column2The following is an example oftext output. Each field is tab separated from the others, with an extra tab where there is an empty field.
$aws iam list-users --output textUSERS arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Admin 2014-10-16T16:03:09+00:00 2016-06-03T18:37:29+00:00 / AIDA1111111111EXAMPLE AdminUSERS arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/backup/backup-user 2019-09-17T19:30:40+00:00 /backup/ AIDA2222222222EXAMPLE backup-userUSERS arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/cli-user 2019-09-17T19:11:39+00:00 / AIDA3333333333EXAMPLE cli-userThe fourth column is thePasswordLastUsed field, and is empty for the last two entries because those users never sign in to the AWS Management Console.
We strongly recommend that if you specifytext output, you also always use the--query option to ensure consistent behavior.
This is because the text format alphabetically orders output columns by the key name of the underlying JSON object returned by the AWS service, and similar resources might not have the same key names. For example, the JSON representation of a Linux-based Amazon EC2 instance might have elements that are not present in the JSON representation of a Windows-based instance, or vice versa. Also, resources might have key-value elements added or removed in future updates, altering the column ordering. This is where--query augments the functionality of thetext output to provide you with complete control over the output format.
In the following example, the command specifies which elements to display anddefines the ordering of the columns with the list notation[key1, key2, ...]. This gives you full confidence that the correct key values are always displayed in the expected column. Finally, notice how the AWS CLI outputsNone as the value for keys that don't exist.
$aws iam list-users --output text --query 'Users[*].[UserName,Arn,CreateDate,PasswordLastUsed,UserId]'Admin arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Admin 2014-10-16T16:03:09+00:00 2016-06-03T18:37:29+00:00 AIDA1111111111EXAMPLEbackup-user arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/backup-user 2019-09-17T19:30:40+00:00 None AIDA2222222222EXAMPLEcli-user arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/cli-backup 2019-09-17T19:11:39+00:00 None AIDA3333333333EXAMPLEThe following example shows how you can usegrep andawk with thetext output from theaws ec2 describe-instances command. The first command displays the Availability Zone, current state, and the instance ID of each instance intext output. The second command processes that output to display only the instance IDs of all running instances in theus-west-2a Availability Zone.
$aws ec2 describe-instances --query 'Reservations[*].Instances[*].[Placement.AvailabilityZone, State.Name, InstanceId]' --output textus-west-2a running i-4b41a37cus-west-2a stopped i-a071c394us-west-2b stopped i-97a217a0us-west-2a running i-3045b007us-west-2a running i-6fc67758$aws ec2 describe-instances --query 'Reservations[*].Instances[*].[Placement.AvailabilityZone, State.Name, InstanceId]' --output text | grep us-west-2a | grep running | awk '{print $3}'i-4b41a37ci-3045b007i-6fc67758The following example goes a step further and shows not only how to filter the output, but how to use that output to automate changing instance types for each stopped instance.
$aws ec2 describe-instances --query 'Reservations[*].Instances[*].[State.Name, InstanceId]' --output text |>grep stopped |>awk '{print $2}' |>while read line;>do aws ec2 modify-instance-attribute --instance-id $line --instance-type '{"Value": "m1.medium"}';>doneThetext output can also be useful in PowerShell. Because the columns intext output are tab delimited, you can easily split the output into an array by using PowerShell's`t delimiter. The following command displays the value of the third column (InstanceId) if the first column (AvailabilityZone) matches the stringus-west-2a.
PS C:\>aws ec2 describe-instances --query 'Reservations[*].Instances[*].[Placement.AvailabilityZone, State.Name, InstanceId]' --output text |%{if ($_.split("`t")[0] -match "us-west-2a"){ $_.split("`t")[2]; } }-4b41a37ci-a071c394i-3045b007i-6fc67758Notice that although the previous example does show how to use the--query parameter to parse the underlying JSON objects and pull out the desired column, PowerShell has its own ability to handle JSON, if cross-platform compatibility isn't a concern. Instead of handling the output as text, as most command shells require, PowerShell lets you use theConvertFrom-JSON cmdlet to produce a hierarchically structured object. You can then directly access the member you want from that object.
(aws ec2 describe-instances --output json | ConvertFrom-Json).Reservations.Instances.InstanceIdIf you output text, and filter the output to a single field using the--query parameter, the output is a single line of tab-separated values. To get each value onto a separate line, you can put the output field in brackets, as shown in the following examples.
Tab separated, single-line output:
$aws iam list-groups-for-user --user-name susan --output text --query "Groups[].GroupName"HRDepartment Developers SpreadsheetUsers LocalAdminsEach value on its own line by putting[GroupName] in brackets:
$aws iam list-groups-for-user --user-name susan --output text --query "Groups[].[GroupName]"HRDepartmentDevelopersSpreadsheetUsersLocalAdminsTable output format
Thetable format produces human-readable representations of complex AWS CLI output in a tabular form.
$aws iam list-users --output table-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| ListUsers |+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+|| Users |||+----------------------------------------------------+---------------------------+---------------------------+----------+-----------------------+-------------+||| Arn | CreateDate | PasswordLastUsed | Path | UserId | UserName |||+----------------------------------------------------+---------------------------+---------------------------+----------+-----------------------+-------------+||| arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Admin | 2014-10-16T16:03:09+00:00 | 2016-06-03T18:37:29+00:00 | / | AIDA1111111111EXAMPLE | Admin |||| arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/backup/backup-user | 2019-09-17T19:30:40+00:00 | | /backup/ | AIDA2222222222EXAMPLE | backup-user |||| arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/cli-user | 2019-09-17T19:11:39+00:00 | | / | AIDA3333333333EXAMPLE | cli-user ||+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+You can combine the--query option with thetable format to display a set of elements preselected from the raw output. Notice the output differences between dictionary and list notations: in the first example, column names are ordered alphabetically, and in the second example, unnamed columns are ordered as defined by the user. For more information about the--query option, seeFiltering output in the AWS CLI.
$aws ec2 describe-volumes --query 'Volumes[*].{ID:VolumeId,InstanceId:Attachments[0].InstanceId,AZ:AvailabilityZone,Size:Size}' --output table------------------------------------------------------| DescribeVolumes | +------------+----------------+--------------+-------+| AZ | ID | InstanceId | Size |+------------+----------------+--------------+-------+| us-west-2a| vol-e11a5288 | i-a071c394 | 30 || us-west-2a| vol-2e410a47 | i-4b41a37c | 8 |+------------+----------------+--------------+-------+$aws ec2 describe-volumes --query 'Volumes[*].[VolumeId,Attachments[0].InstanceId,AvailabilityZone,Size]' --output table----------------------------------------------------| DescribeVolumes |+--------------+--------------+--------------+-----+| vol-e11a5288| i-a071c394 | us-west-2a | 30 || vol-2e410a47| i-4b41a37c | us-west-2a | 8 |+--------------+--------------+--------------+-----+