how to get InstanceID via ec2 api?

Question

I need a function wich tells me the instanceID, I was searching here for a function, but you always need the id... Yeah and this is the problem.

I'm not allowed to use the console, need to find it out via a script.

I saw the AWS.MetadataService documentation, but I can't handle it. I just can see single pieces but I don't know how to match them right, to geht what I want. At the moment I have this

var meta  = new AWS.MetadataService();

meta.request("http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/", function(err, data){
    console.log(data);
});

But ofc this dont works... What needs to be in the path parameter?

Answer 1

If your script is running on the EC2 instance for which you want the ID, you can get the EC2 instance ID from the instance meta-data. This command will give you the EC2 instance ID (eg. i-12345678):

curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id

Full docs for the meta-data can be found here:

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-instance-metadata.html

Update:

For something in Node, try this:

var meta  = new AWS.MetadataService();

meta.request("/latest/meta-data/instance-id", function(err, data){
    console.log(data);
});

Don't include the http:// and host parts. Just the final path.