aws-cli

name	aws-cli
description	AWS CLI best practices including pagination control, output formatting, and efficient querying. Use when running AWS CLI commands, querying AWS resources, or automating AWS operations.

AWS CLI

Pagination Control

Always use --no-cli-pager for complete results in a single response:

# Good: Complete results
aws ec2 describe-instances --no-cli-pager
aws s3api list-objects-v2 --bucket my-bucket --no-cli-pager
aws iam list-users --no-cli-pager

# Bad: May truncate or require interaction
aws ec2 describe-instances

Only use default pagination when:

• User explicitly requests paginated output
• Working with extremely large datasets
• User asks for "first N results"

Query and Filtering

Combine --no-cli-pager with --query for efficient data retrieval:

# Running instances only
aws ec2 describe-instances --no-cli-pager \
  --query 'Reservations[].Instances[?State.Name==`running`].[InstanceId,InstanceType]'

# Large S3 objects
aws s3api list-objects-v2 --bucket my-bucket --no-cli-pager \
  --query 'Contents[?Size>`1000000`].[Key,Size]'

# Specific fields as table
aws ec2 describe-instances --no-cli-pager \
  --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].[InstanceId,State.Name,InstanceType]' \
  --output table

Output Formats

--output json   # Default, full detail
--output table  # Human-readable
--output text   # Tab-separated, good for scripting
--output yaml   # YAML format

Common Patterns

# Get account ID
aws sts get-caller-identity --query 'Account' --output text --no-cli-pager

# List all regions
aws ec2 describe-regions --query 'Regions[].RegionName' --output text --no-cli-pager

# Wait for resource
aws ec2 wait instance-running --instance-ids i-1234567890abcdef0

# Dry run (check permissions)
aws ec2 run-instances --dry-run --image-id ami-12345 --instance-type t3.micro