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    :Call API operations by using CLI

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    :Call API operations by using CLI

    Last Updated:Sep 11, 2026

    Cloud Shell is integrated with OpenAPI Explorer. Cloud Shell is a web-based CLI provided by Alibaba Cloud CLI. You can use Cloud Shell without the need to install it or specify an AccessKey pair.

    Alibaba Cloud APIs are either RPC or RESTful. Most products (ECS, ApsaraDB RDS, load balancer) use RPC APIs.

    Identify the API type by these characteristics:

    • RPC APIs include an Action parameter, while RESTful APIs require a PathPattern parameter.

    • Typically, all API operations for a single cloud product are of the same type.

    Start Cloud Shell

    1. Log on to OpenAPI Explorer.

    2. In the top navigation bar, click Select a cloud service. In the panel that appears, select the target cloud service.

    3. In the top navigation bar of the homepage of the cloud service, click API Debugging. On the page that appears, click the CLI Example tab.

    4. On the CLI Example tab, click the image.png icon to start Cloud Shell.

      You can also directly go to the page of Alibaba Cloud Shell.

    Call an RPC API operation in Cloud Shell

    You must comply with the following command format when you call an RPC API operation in Cloud Shell: 

    aliyun <ProductCode> <ActionName> [--parameter1 value1 --parameter2 value2]

    Parameter

    Description

    Example

    ProductCode

    The cloud product code. For example, the product code for Elastic Compute Service (ECS) is ecs, and the service code for Server Load Balancer (SLB) is slb.

    You can execute the aliyun --help command to view product codes.

    Run the following command in Cloud Shell to view the configurations of an ECS instance.

    Note

    Replace i-bp198exxxxxx with the ID of the ECS instance. 

    aliyun ecs DescribeInstanceAttribute --InstanceId i-bp198exxxxxx | jq

    ActionName

    The API operation that you want to call. For example, you can call the DescribeInstanceAttribute operation of ECS to view the details of an ECS instance.

    parameter

    The request parameters. For more information, see the API references of each Alibaba Cloud service.

    Call a RESTful API operation in Cloud Shell

    RESTful API applies to specific Alibaba Cloud services such as Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK). RESTful API operations are called in a way different from RPC API operations. The following section provides the formats of commands that are required to call RESTful API operations in Cloud Shell.

    • GET request

      aliyun <ProductCode> GET /<Resource>

      Example

      aliyun cs GET /clusters

    • POST request

      aliyun <ProductCode> POST /<Resource> --body "$(cat input.json)"

      Example

      aliyun cs POST /clusters/<cluster-id> --header "Content-Type=application/json" --body "$(cat attach.json)"

    • DELETE request

      aliyun <ProductCode> DELETE /<Resource>

      Example

      aliyun cs DELETE /clusters/<cluster-id>