Boto3 - The AWS SDK for Python

Boto3 is the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Software Development Kit (SDK) for Python, which allows Python developers to write software that makes use of services like Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, AWS Cost Explorer, AWS Lambda and many more services.

Python Version

Boto3 was deprecated for Python2.7 and henceforth it is recommended for the developers to use latest versions of Python or pin the version of Boto3.

Getting Started

Expecting to have a pre-setup of Python Environment over the local. Moving forward, make sure that if you are using Python3.x version, then you must have updated version of pip as well.

Use the following command to get pip:

sudo apt-get install python3-pip

NOTE:

If you're running Python 2.7.9+ or Python 3.4+, Congrats, you should already have pip installed.

Then the most crucial step is to install the latest version of Boto3 in the local.

python3 -m pip3 install boto3

After the installation of Boto3, set up of AWS – Credentials is must.

[default]
aws_access_key_id = YOUR_KEY
aws_secret_access_key = YOUR_SECRET_KEY

To check the credentials in your terminal, do this:

~/.aws/credentials

Next step is to set up the region where you want to work. To know more about AWS-Regions, navigate here.

For exploring the Cost Explorer using AWS-Boto3 , the region will be us-east-1 only.

So, set up the default region with ~/.aws/config

[default]
region = us-east-1

Alternate Method to Access AWS – ARN user!!!

The alternate method to connect with any AWS Account is to create an IAM role for a user and then with the help of ARN Credentials a Session-Token can be generated which can help us access the AWS with the help of Python-boto3-sdk

Same as above, we have multiple ways of connecting boto3 with our local. You can find them HERE

Moving forward to the in depth understanding of Cost Explorer API