Find latest Amazon deep learning AMI

find-latest-ami.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Find the latest Amazon-created "Deep Learning AMI (Ubuntu 18.04)" AMI image ID
#
# args explanation:
#   --region us-east-1
#     Specifies the AWS region (you can also specify it in your
#     ~/.aws/config or via the `AWS_REGION` or `AWS_DEFAULT_REGION`
#     env vars)
#
#   --filters
#     After this argument, each following argument in the form:
#       Name=<name>,Values=<value1>[,<value2>...]
#     will be interpreted as a filter for narrowing the search, as
#     documented in `aws ec2 describe-images help`.
#
#   Name=owner-id,Values=898082745236
#     Only show results from the AWS account 898082745236, which is
#     Amazon's image distribution account. Adding this filter prevents
#     getting random other public AMIs that match the Name field.
#
#   Name=name,Values="Deep Learning AMI (Ubuntu 18.04) *"
#     This will match any AMI with a `Name` property beginning with
#     "Deep Learning AMI (Ubuntu 18.04) ". The "*" means to match any
#     remaining characters (for these AMIs, the remaining string is always
#     "Version NN.N").
#
#   --query 'reverse(sort_by(Images, &CreationDate))[0].ImageId'
#     This is a JMESPath (https://jmespath.org/examples.html) query over
#     the results of the filters (about 50 AMI images dating back to 2020).
#     `sort_by(Images, &CreationDate)` sorts the images by the CreationDate
#     field. `reverse()` reverses that list so the newest is first, then
#     `[0]` takes the first result only, and `.ImageId` prints the AMI ID.
#
#   --output text
#     This just ensures the output of the command won't come with extraneous
#     quotes, depending on your setting for AWS CLI output formatting.
#

aws ec2 describe-images \
    --region us-east-1 \
    --filters \
        Name=owner-id,Values=898082745236 \
        Name=name,Values="Deep Learning AMI (Ubuntu 18.04) *" \
    --query 'reverse(sort_by(Images, &CreationDate))[0].ImageId' \
    --output text