Amazon EC2

Ever try to query for some instances with boto? It sucks.

>>> import ec2
>>> ec2.instances.filter(state='running', name__startswith='production')
[...]

Install

$ pip install ec2

Usage

AWS credentials

Credentials are defined as a global state, either through an environment variable, or in Python.

ec2.credentials.ACCESS_KEY_ID = 'xxx'
ec2.credentials.SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = 'xxx'
ec2.credentials.REGION_NAME = 'us-west-2'  # (optional) defaults to us-east-1

Credentials can also be loaded from a CSV file generated by Amazon's IAM. Note: REGION_NAME still needs to be specified.

ec2.credentials.from_file('credentials.csv')

Querying

All instances

ec2.instances.all()

All Security Groups

ec2.security_groups.all()

All Virtual Private Clouds

ec2.vpcs.all()

Filtering

Filter style is based on Django's ORM All filters map directly to instance/security group properties.

ec2.instances.filter(id='i-xxx')  # Exact instance id
ec2.instances.filter(state='running')  # Exact instance state

Filters will also dig into tags.

ec2.instances.filter(name='production-web')  # Exact "Name" tag

Filters support many types of comparisons, similar to Django's ORM filters.

ec2.instances.filter(name__exact='production-web-01')  # idential to `name='...'`
ec2.instances.filter(name__iexact='PRODUCTION-WEB-01')  # Case insensitive "exact"
ec2.instances.filter(name__like=r'^production-web-\d+$')  # Match against a regular expression
ec2.instances.filter(name__ilike=r'^production-web-\d+$')  # Case insensitive "like"
ec2.instances.filter(name__contains='web')  # Field contains the search string
ec2.instances.filter(name__icontains='WEB')  # Case insensitive "contains"
ec2.instances.filter(name__startswith='production')  # Fields starts with the search string
ec2.instances.filter(name__istartswith='PRODUCTION')  # Case insensitive "startswith"
ec2.instances.filter(name__endswith='01')  # Fields ends with the search string
ec2.instances.filter(name__iendswith='01')  # Case insensitive "endswith"
ec2.instances.filter(name__isnull=False)  # Match if the field exists

Filters can also be chained.

ec2.instances.filter(state='running', name__startswith='production')

Filters can also be used with security groups.

ec2.security_groups.filter(name__iexact='PRODUCTION-WEB')

Filters can also be used with virtual private clouds.

ec2.vpcs.filter(cidr_blocks__startswith='10.10')

get() works exactly the same as filter(), except it returns just one instance and raises an exception for anything else.

ec2.instances.get(name='production-web-01')  # Return a single instance
ec2.instances.get(name='i-dont-exist')  # Raises an `ec2.instances.DoesNotExist` exception
ec2.instances.get(name__like=r'^production-web-\d+$')  # Raises an `ec2.instances.MultipleObjectsReturned` exception if matched more than one instance
ec2.security_groups.get(name__startswith='production')  # Raises an `ec2.security_groups.MultipleObjectsReturned` exception
ec2.vpcs.get(cidr_block='10.10.0.0/16')

Search fields

Instances

• id (Instance id)
• state (running, terminated, pending, shutting-down, stopping, stopped)
• public_dns_name
• ip_address
• private_dns_name
• private_ip_address
• root_device_type (ebs, instance-store)
• key_name (name of the SSH key used on the instance)
• image_id (Id of the AMI)

All fields can be found at: https://github.com/boto/boto/blob/d91ed8/boto/ec2/instance.py#L157-204

Security Groups

• id (Security Group id)
• name
• vpc_id

Virtual Private Clouds

• id (Virtual Private Cloud id)
• cidr_block (CIDR Network Block of the VPC)
• state (Current state of the VPC, creation is not instant)
• is_default
• instance_tenancy
• dhcp_options_id (DHCP options id)

Examples

Get public ip addresses from all running instances who are named production-web-{number}

import ec2
ec2.credentials.ACCESS_KEY_ID = 'xxx'
ec2.credentials.SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = 'xxx'

for instance in ec2.instances.filter(state='running', name__like=r'^production-web-\d+$'):
    print instance.ip_address

Add a role to a security group

import ec2
ec2.credentials.ACCESS_KEY_ID = 'xxx'
ec2.credentials.SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = 'xxx'

try:
    group = ec2.security_groups.get(name='production-web')
except ec2.security_groups.DoesNotExist:
    import sys
    sys.stderr.write('Not found.')
    sys.exit(1)
group.authorize('tcp', 80, 80, cidr_ip='0.0.0.0/0')