Python - Boto3 and AWS RDS

Introduction

In the past, you would have created a relational database using the user interface or the SQL client for database creation, management, and administration. RDS is the Relational Database Service of AWS to set up, create, and operate a relational database on the AWS Cloud.

In this how-to guide, you will learn how to install and configure a Python SDK library called Boto3. The Boto3 library will be used to programmatically call the interface of AWS RDS API to create and manage a database, which is covered under References.

Pre-requisites

  • AWS account

  • AWS Access Key

  • Python

  • Boto3

Get started

  1. You must sign in to AWS to create an account. After you create an account, it is advisable to create an IAM user and create Access Keys.

Access keys consist of an Access Key ID and a Secret Access Key.

  1. If you are on a Mac, open your terminal and install Python. Check the version.

Note: If you have an older version of Python 2.7.xx, do not use it. Install the latest version of Python.

python3
Python 3.9.5 (default, May  4 2021, 03:36:27)
  1. Install Boto3.

Boto3 is the AWS SDK for Python to access AWS resources through an API. Install pip which is a package manager for Python.

python3 -m pip install boto3

Type the command to see the Boto3 version

python3 -c "import boto3, sys; print(f'{sys.version} \nboto3: {boto3.__version__}')"

Alternatively, you can check the version below.

pip show boto3
Name: boto3
Version: 1.24.50
Summary: The AWS SDK for Python
Home-page: https://github.com/boto/boto3
Author: Amazon Web Services
Author-email: 
License: Apache License 2.0
Location: /usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages
Requires: botocore, jmespath, s3transfer
  1. Configure aws-cli

The AWS Command Line Interface is a unified tool to manage your AWS services.

On your terminal, configure AWS cli options and you will be prompted to enter the AWS Access Key ID and AWS Secret Access Key ID which you created earlier from Step1.

Note: You can try these instructions on the AWS Cloud shell on the Console too.

aws configure
AWS Access Key ID [****************YRMU]:xxxxxxxxxxx
AWS Secret Access Key [****************yXT7]: xxxxxxxxxx
Default region name [yes]: us-east-1
Default output format [None]:
  1. The setup is ready. Refer to the API Reference for AWS RDS to run a Python SDK to create and stop the MySQL database.

References

Boto3 docs - quickstart to install Python and Boto3.