Syntax for filters for aws rds describe-db-instances

Question

When we run the command using filters we are getting the error:

$ aws rds describe-db-instances --filters Name=instance-state-name,Values=running

An error occurred (InvalidParameterValue) when calling the
DescribeDBInstances operation: Unrecognized filter name: instance-state-name.

What is the correct syntax for using filters for aws rds describe-db-instances?

Answer 1

Your syntax seems to be fine, but instance-state-name is simply not a valid filter for RDS.

From the documentation:

--filters (list)

A filter that specifies one or more DB instances to describe.

Supported filters:

    db-cluster-id - Accepts DB cluster identifiers and DB cluster Ama-
    zon Resource Names (ARNs). The results list will only include
    information about the DB instances associated with the DB Clusters
    identified by these ARNs.

    db-instance-id - Accepts DB instance identifiers and DB instance
    Amazon Resource Names (ARNs). The results list will only include
    information about the DB instances identified by these ARNs.

As something like instance-state-name doesn't exist for RDS I assume what you're searching for instead is DBInstanceStatus. While it's not possible to use --filter to filter for that, you can use --query:

aws rds describe-db-instances --query 'DBInstances[?DBInstanceStatus==`available`]'

The difference between --filter and --query is that --filter directly influences what's sent back by the API, while --query does some local filtering of the results received from the API. As long as you don't have a very large amount of RDS instances, --query should work fine for you.