Setup AWS CLI for Local Development

This post is related to an upcoming series that covers making Serverless Apps using Python, AWS Lambda, and API Gateway. That's how we choose the policies we did but the overall setup process is the same regardless of the service (and policy) you decide to use.

Related Posts:

AWS S3, IAM Group & Policy Setup

Setup your local system with the AWS CLI

1. Create AWS Account

2. Download & Install AWS CLI here

3. Configure local IAM user credentials

Login and Navigate to IAM
Select Groups in the Sidebar
Select Create New Group We create a group to add policies instead of directly to the user. That way we can remove users from groups instead of trying to remember which users have which policies.
Name Group LocalDevUsers, Click Next Step
Under Policies, select the ones that are best suited for this group's use cases; I only selected AWSLambdaFullAccess at this time since it's easy to add more later. Now select Next Step
Select Create Group
Select Users in the Sidebar
Select Add user
Add your User name
Check Programmatic access. This is required for using the AWS CLI
Select Next: Permissions
Under Add user to Group, find your recent group LocalDevUsers set above.
Select Next: Tags. Add tags if you want.
Select Next: Review. Review information is correct.
Select Create user
Make note of the Access key id and Secret access key or select Download .csv.
Hit Close
Select Groups in the Sidebar
Find and select your group. Mine is LocalDevUsers
Under the Users tab (not the sidebar), verify your recently created user is listed. If not, select Add Users to this Group, find and select your user and click Add User.

4. Configure AWS CLI with your user

Open Terminal / PowerShell and do the following:

aws configure

You should see:

AWS Access Key ID [None]:

Enter your Access key id from above. Press enter/return. Now you'll see:

AWS Secret Access Key [None]:

Enter your Secret access key from above. Press enter/return. Now you'll see:

Default region name [None]: us-west-1

I'm going to use us-west-1 but you should pick a region where you're closest to. Regions are listed here

Default output format [None]: json

5. AWS CLI Commands Reference

The AWS CLI reference is here. Whenever you need a new service to be accessible by our user above. Just add a new policy that gives them the permissions they need. In our next post, we'll cover how to create an S3 Bucket with the necessary permissions for a IAM User Group (or individual user).

Now your AWS CLI should be set up. Enjoy.