Making Sense of AWS CLI documention

DevOps AWS
#1

How do you make sense of aws cli documention? Specifically the syntax structuring of commands? For exaample aws dynamodb import-table.
Documentation gives no example on how to structure the values for table-creation-parameters. Do you just guess or google until you find enough info to get it right? https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/dynamodb/import-table.html

#2 
AttributeDefinitions:
  - AttributeName: somestring
    AttributeType: somestring
#3

AttributeDefinitions can have many items, each with a name and type

#4

Etc with the other stuff, the doc is at least trying to show this structure

#5

My example is yaml, but it’s more or less the same in JSON just with the {}[], in there and quotes around all the keys and strings

#6

I mean that it’s not easy to craft the command by looking at the doc

#7

I’ve seen far worse docs to be honest

#8

This is pretty typical of like API documentation

#9

The fact that it structured this way hints that it’s really part of the body of an API call that the AWSCLI is making for you under the hood

#10

You could probably look up the API it’s using and find that it will have a JSON object structured exactly the same

#11

I’m really just trying to understand how to interpret this doc and make sense of how to structure the command because I understand the api call.

#12

Are you having trouble getting it onto one line or what? Not that it’s impossible but it would be annoying to put that as JSON on a single line

#13

You can use whatever shell you’re in to store it using some nice JSON or yaml though so it’s easier to pass into the cli command

#14

Personally I find yaml much easier to read and write, since you don’t need all the special characters. It’s easy enough to convert between them since yaml is a supertype of json

#15

I’m on a phone or else I would give you a full example. Though you can probably find one on stack overflow with a bit of googling

#16

Or ask chat gpt, it may be able to give you a working example too

#17

I see. I am definitely missing something that’s keeping me from connecting the dots here.

I’m having trouble understanding how the documentation wants me to format values for --table-creation-parameters specifically.

#18

For example, what did you read in the doc that let you know that you can store it a json/yaml and pass to cli? Just looking at the boto3 equivalent. It is super clear how to structure this.

I know how I can find the answer via google etc. I’m more trying to understand how to read this type of documentation and apply it across the board because I understand yaml/json.

#19

I just assume it’s JSON because it’s structured like json

#20

And that’s what APIs typically use