Where does outfile field in the output structure of in a BinaryFile retrieving API come from ?

[Zhenye-Na]

Background

We utilized aws cli add-model, imported the json spec and configure to enable the cli commands, all works perfectly

Question

In one API we built, the output of the API is trying to return a binary file, like return a zip archive or a text file like API Gateway get-export

I noticed that when I try to invoke the command with help to see the information, I see

aws awesome-service awesome-function help


XXXX
XXXX


outfile (string) Filename where the content will be saved

However, I did not define any attribute in my output structure to have this variable name.

Can I get some instructions how and why the outfile appeared in my CLI command and anything I can do to customize it?

for example, changed it to

--output-file filename

and by default create a filename.ext in the local

[tim-finnigan]

The outfile argument is going to be a positional argument representing the name of the file to save the binary payload from your operation.

So for example, you would run:

aws awesome-service awesome-function path/to/payload-content

and it would save the content of the payload to the file path/to/payload-content.

This argument is added automatically to any CLI command where the API operation has an output that is a streaming blob. In terms of customizing it, the team would prefer to keep what is automatically added to stay consistent with other service APIs whose outputs are streaming blobs.

[Zhenye-Na]

Thank you for the response. Exactly what I found right now.

My only concern is that, suppose our backend API return the blob of a zip file, but customer assigns outfile argument as a text file, or any other file extension, for example

aws awesome-service awesome-function plain-text.txt
aws awesome-service awesome-function tar-ball.tar

// plain-text.txt or tar-ball.tar is wrong because it wont be opened properly

This will lead to that customer receives incorrect result. so what I am thinking to customize is something like

aws awesome-service awesome-function --out-file-name awesome-filename

and behind the scene, the cli will download the file blob, to awesome-filename.zip,

I see there are some customization in other AWS services awscli/customizations. I am wondering if this will be the right place if I need to modify the CLI behavior ?

[Zhenye-Na]

@tim-finnigan

any insights forthe follow up I asked here?

[tim-finnigan]

Since this question was raised internally we asked that the discussion continue in the ticket you originally created.

[Zhenye-Na]

found it, thanks!