ec2-meta-env

A simple wrapper script to manifest EC2 instance metadata as environment variables.

Installing ec2-meta-env

Installing ec2-meta-env is as simple as:

pip install ec2-meta-env --upgrade

Using ec2-meta-env

To include EC2 instance meta data in your application’s shell environment, wrap your shell command with the ec2-meta-env script and specify the environment variables you wish to use, e.g.:

ec2-meta-env -e local-ipv4 /path/to/my/app

In the above example, the value of local-ipv4 will be accessible in the shell environment for /path/to/my/app under the variable name EC2_LOCAL_IPV4. Environment variable names are formed by prepending the meta API path with EC2_, uppercasing, and replacing all dashes and forward slashes with underscores.

Other options

A complete list of options can be found by running:

ec2-meta-env --help

Why ec2-meta-env?

EC2 provides instance metadata via http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/. Sometimes it’s easier to use that information if it’s available via environment variables, for example, if your application’s running inside a Docker container on Amazon’s Elastic Container Service (ECS). This project makes it possible to do that without calling the EC2 instance meta data API manually.

Thanks and I hope you find ec2-meta-env helpful!

~Tobias McNulty