Use the Alibaba Cloud CLI extension in the VS Code editor - Alibaba Cloud CLI

This topic describes how to install and use the Alibaba Cloud CLI extension for Visual Studio Code (VS Code). In this example, the DescribeInstances operation of Elastic Compute Service is called by using the Alibaba Cloud CLI extension in the VS Code editor.

Prerequisites

Alibaba Cloud CLI is installed, and the profile information is configured for Alibaba Cloud CLI. For more information about how to install Alibaba Cloud CLI and configure the profile information, see Use Alibaba Cloud CLI to call API operations.
The AliyunECSReadOnlyAccess permission is granted to the Resource Access Management (RAM) user that you use to access Alibaba Cloud CLI.ECS

Overview

To use the Alibaba Cloud CLI extension to call the DescribeInstances operation of ECS in the VS Code editor, perform the following steps:

Install the Alibaba Cloud CLI extension, which is named Alibaba Cloud CLI Tools.
Create a file with the file name extension .aliyun and write the command for calling the DescribeInstances operation in the file.
Select the command that you want to run and run the command in the editor or on the terminal.

Step 1: Install the Alibaba Cloud CLI extension

Install the extension from the marketplace

In the left-side activity bar of the VS Code editor, click the icon.
Enter Alibaba Cloud CLI Tools in the search box. Select Alibaba Cloud CLI Tools from the search results and click Install.

Install the extension from a browser

Visit the official page of Alibaba Cloud CLI Tools in the marketplace in a browser and click Install. You are navigated to the Alibaba Cloud CLI extension page in the VS Code editor.
Click Install.

After the Alibaba Cloud CLI extension is installed, the icon and current configuration of the Alibaba Cloud CLI extension are displayed in the bottom status bar. You can click the icon to configure the profile information for the extension.

Step 2: Write a command

In the VS Code editor, choose File > New File. In the dialog box that appears, enter example.aliyun to create a file with the file name extension .aliyun.
Note
When you write code in the .aliyun file, the Alibaba Cloud CLI extension provides command completion hints. This greatly improves your coding efficiency.
Auto completion for commands
Auto completion for methods
Auto completion for parameters
Write the following command based on the hints and specify the parameters as needed.
```
aliyun ecs DescribeInstances --InstanceIds "['i-bp118piqciobxjkb****']"
```

Step 3: Run the command

After a command is written, you can run the command on the terminal or in the editor.

Run the complete command on the terminal

Click run above the command that you want to run to open the terminal and run the complete command.

Run the selected part of the command on the terminal

Press and hold the left mouse button to select the part of the command that you want to run. Right-click the selected part.
Choose Alibaba Cloud CLI > Run Line in Terminal to open the terminal and run the selected part of the command.

Run the selected part of the command in the editor

Press and hold the left mouse button to select the part of the command that you want to run. Right-click the selected part.
Choose Alibaba Cloud CLI > Run Line in Editor to run the selected part in the VS Code editor.