[ aws . iot ]

describe-thing

Description

Gets information about the specified thing.

Requires permission to access the DescribeThing action.

See also: AWS API Documentation

See ‘aws help’ for descriptions of global parameters.

Synopsis

  describe-thing
--thing-name <value>
[--cli-input-json | --cli-input-yaml]
[--generate-cli-skeleton <value>]

Options

--thing-name (string)

The name of the thing.

--cli-input-json | --cli-input-yaml (string) Reads arguments from the JSON string provided. The JSON string follows the format provided by --generate-cli-skeleton. If other arguments are provided on the command line, those values will override the JSON-provided values. It is not possible to pass arbitrary binary values using a JSON-provided value as the string will be taken literally. This may not be specified along with --cli-input-yaml.

--generate-cli-skeleton (string) Prints a JSON skeleton to standard output without sending an API request. If provided with no value or the value input, prints a sample input JSON that can be used as an argument for --cli-input-json. Similarly, if provided yaml-input it will print a sample input YAML that can be used with --cli-input-yaml. If provided with the value output, it validates the command inputs and returns a sample output JSON for that command. The generated JSON skeleton is not stable between versions of the AWS CLI and there are no backwards compatibility guarantees in the JSON skeleton generated.

See ‘aws help’ for descriptions of global parameters.

Examples

Note

To use the following examples, you must have the AWS CLI installed and configured. See the Getting started guide in the AWS CLI User Guide for more information.

Unless otherwise stated, all examples have unix-like quotation rules. These examples will need to be adapted to your terminal’s quoting rules. See Using quotation marks with strings in the AWS CLI User Guide .

To display detailed information about a thing

The following describe-thing example display information about a thing (device) that is defined in the AWS IoT registry for your AWS account.

aws iot describe-thing

–thing-name “MyLightBulb”

Output:

{
    "defaultClientId": "MyLightBulb",
    "thingName": "MyLightBulb",
    "thingId": "40da2e73-c6af-406e-b415-15acae538797",
    "thingArn": "arn:aws:iot:us-west-2:123456789012:thing/MyLightBulb",
    "thingTypeName": "LightBulb",
    "attributes": {
        "model": "123",
        "wattage": "75"
    },
    "version": 1
}

For more information, see How to Manage Things with the Registry in the AWS IoT Developers Guide.

Output

defaultClientId -> (string)

The default MQTT client ID. For a typical device, the thing name is also used as the default MQTT client ID. Although we don’t require a mapping between a thing’s registry name and its use of MQTT client IDs, certificates, or shadow state, we recommend that you choose a thing name and use it as the MQTT client ID for the registry and the Device Shadow service.

This lets you better organize your IoT fleet without removing the flexibility of the underlying device certificate model or shadows.

thingName -> (string)

The name of the thing.

thingId -> (string)

The ID of the thing to describe.

thingArn -> (string)

The ARN of the thing to describe.

thingTypeName -> (string)

The thing type name.

attributes -> (map)

The thing attributes.

key -> (string)

value -> (string)

version -> (long)

The current version of the thing record in the registry.

Note

To avoid unintentional changes to the information in the registry, you can pass the version information in the expectedVersion parameter of the UpdateThing and DeleteThing calls.

billingGroupName -> (string)

The name of the billing group the thing belongs to.