This documentation is for Version 1 of the Amazon CLI only. For documentation related to Version 2 of the Amazon CLI, see the Version 2 User Guide.
Using shorthand syntax in the Amazon CLI
The Amazon Command Line Interface (Amazon CLI) can accept many of its option parameters in JSON format. However, it can be tedious to enter large JSON lists or structures on the command line. To make this easier, the Amazon CLI also supports a shorthand syntax that enables a simpler representation of your option parameters than using the full JSON format.
Structure parameters
The shorthand syntax in the Amazon CLI makes it easier for users to input parameters that are flat (non-nested structures). The format is a comma-separated list of key-value pairs. Be sure to use the quoting and escaping rules appropriate for your terminal as shorthand syntax are strings.
These are both equivalent to the following example, formatted in JSON.
--option
'{"key1":"value1","key2":"value2","key3":"value3"}'
There must be no white space between each comma-separated key-value pair. Here is an
example of the Amazon DynamoDB update-table
command with the
--provisioned-throughput
option specified in shorthand.
$
aws dynamodb update-table \ --provisioned-throughput
ReadCapacityUnits=15,WriteCapacityUnits=10
\ --table-name MyDDBTable
This is equivalent to the following example formatted in JSON.
$
aws dynamodb update-table \ --provisioned-throughput
'{"ReadCapacityUnits":15,"WriteCapacityUnits":10}'
\ --table-name MyDDBTable
Using shorthand syntax with the Amazon Command Line Interface
You can specify Input parameters in a list form in two ways: JSON or shorthand. The Amazon CLI shorthand syntax is designed to make it easier to pass in lists with number, string, or non-nested structures.
The basic format is shown here, where values in the list are separated by a single space.
--option
value1 value2 value3
This is equivalent to the following example, formatted in JSON.
--option
'[value1,value2,value3]'
As previously mentioned, you can specify a list of numbers, a list of strings, or a list
of non-nested structures in shorthand. The following is an example of the
stop-instances
command for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), where the input parameter (list
of strings) for the --instance-ids
option is specified in shorthand.
$
aws ec2 stop-instances \ --instance-ids
i-1486157a i-1286157c i-ec3a7e87
This is equivalent to the following example formatted in JSON.
$
aws ec2 stop-instances \ --instance-ids
'["i-1486157a","i-1286157c","i-ec3a7e87"]'
The following example shows the Amazon EC2 create-tags
command, which takes a list
of non-nested structures for the --tags
option. The --resources
option specifies the ID of the instance to tag.
$
aws ec2 create-tags \ --resources i-1286157c \ --tags
Key=My1stTag,Value=Value1 Key=My2ndTag,Value=Value2 Key=My3rdTag,Value=Value3
This is equivalent to the following example, formatted in JSON. The JSON parameter is written over multiple lines for readability.
$
aws ec2 create-tags \ --resources i-1286157c \ --tags
'[ {"Key": "My1stTag", "Value": "Value1"}, {"Key": "My2ndTag", "Value": "Value2"}, {"Key": "My3rdTag", "Value": "Value3"} ]'