Aws-cli: AWS CLI list instances

[yomeshk]

Hello,

When I am trying to list instance names in text format it works

aws ec2 describe-instances --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].[Tags[?Key==Name].Value[]]' --output text

However when I try to list the same as table it returns an error.

aws ec2 describe-instances --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].[Tags[?Key==Name].Value[]]' --output table
Error - Row should have 1 elements, instead it has 0

My eventual goal is to list all stopped instances with details of instance-id, Name-tag and instance type in a tabular format.

The command I am trying is:
aws ec2 describe-instances --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].[ InstanceId,[Tags[?Key==Name].Value][0][0],State.Name,InstanceType,Placement.AvailabilityZone ]' --output table

Any help would be appreciated.

[mtdowling]

There are a couple issues with your query:

1. Tags[?Key==Name] should be Tags[?Key==\'Name\'] -- notice that we are using literal syntax here.
2. Instead of expanding the filter projection into a list and taking [0][0] from the list, you can stop the projection and take the first result using the | character.

Does the following expression work correctly for you?

aws ec2 describe-instances --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].[InstanceId, Tags[?Key=="Name"].Value | [0], State.Name, InstanceType, Placement.AvailabilityZone]' --output table

[yomeshk]

Thanks for the response @mtdowling. I tried the expression shared by you. It gives me the following output

| DescribeInstances |
+------------+-------+----------+--------------+--------------+
| | None | running | | |
| | None | running | | |
| | None | running | | |

It still does not give me the "Name" tag

[yomeshk]

I got the output that I am looking for in "text" format using the below expression

aws ec2 describe-instances --query 'Reservations[_].Instances[_].[Placement.AvailabilityZone,InstanceId,InstanceType,Platform,State.Name,Tags[?Key ==Name]]' --output text

However, when I change the output format from text to table it gives an error as "list index out of range". Any suggerstions?

[jamesls]

Sorry for the delay. Here's an expression you can use:

$ aws ec2 describe-instances --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].[Placement.AvailabilityZone,InstanceId,InstanceType,Platform,State.Name,Tags[?Key==`Name`] | [0].Value]' --output table
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|                                      DescribeInstances                                     |
+------------+-------------+------------+----------+----------+------------------------------+
|  us-west-2b|  i-12345678 |  m3.large  |  windows |  stopped |  first-name-test-1           |
|  us-west-2c|  i-22345678 |  t2.medium |  None    |  running |  second-name-test-1          |
|  us-west-2a|  i-32345678 |  c3.large  |  None    |  stopped |  third-name-test-1           |
|  us-west-2b|  i-42345678 |  m3.xlarge |  windows |  stopped |  fourth-name-test-1          |
|  us-west-2c|  i-52345678 |  m3.medium |  windows |  running |  fifth-name-test-1           |
+------------+-------------+------------+----------+----------+------------------------------+

Let me know if you have any more questions.

[svuppala01]

Hi jamesls,

i was googling for something i'm trying to do and found this forum and thought it was helpful.i'm very new to aws and mostly use it via console.one of the things i have to do is to go in to the console and see if there are any instances that are stopped for more than a week and terminate them.i normally do it from the console manually.i've never used cli before and just started reading it.is there a way that can be done.

list the availability zone,instance ID,size,state=stopped,name of the instance,date when stopped and if it is equal to 7 then terminate it.

any help/advice will be gratly appreciated.

thanks in advance,

svuppala01.