Loading credentials JSON with AWS SDK Results in Error

Question

I'm trying to load credentials for AWS with loadFromPath and getting an unexpected error. Hardcoding the same credentials with AWS.config.update works fine. To make sure the path and format of credentials file is correct I loaded the same with fs.readFile and it loads correctly, so there don't seem to be any path / permissions issues. This seems super basic but I've been pulling my hair out trying to resolve. Thanks for your help.

The error / output:

    Here: /home/ec2-user/.ec2/credentials.json
    Got this through readFile: { access_id: 'XXXXXXX',
    private_key: 'XXXXXXX',
    keypair: 'praneethkey',
    'key-pair-file': '/home/ec2-user/.ec2/praneethkey.pem',
    region: 'us-west-2' }

    /home/ec2-user/node_modules/aws-sdk/lib/config.js:221
    if (err) throw err;
                   ^
  SyntaxError: Unexpected token <
    at Object.parse (native)
    at /home/ec2-user/node_modules/aws-sdk/lib/metadata_service.js:100:38
    at IncomingMessage.<anonymous> (/home/ec2-user/node_modules/aws-sdk/lib/metadata_service.js:75:43)
    at IncomingMessage.EventEmitter.emit (events.js:117:20)
    at _stream_readable.js:910:16
    at process._tickCallback (node.js:415:13)

The code:

'use strict';

var AWS = require('aws-sdk');
var fs = require('fs');

var pathv = process.env.HOME + '/.ec2/credentials.json';

AWS.config.loadFromPath(pathv);

console.log('Here: ' + pathv);


fs.readFile(pathv, 'utf8', function (err, data) {
  if (err) {
    console.log('Error: ' + err);
    return;
  }
  data = JSON.parse(data);

console.log("Got this through readFile:",data);

What does the json file look like?

Assaf Lavie
– Assaf Lavie

2013-08-09 07:58:05 +00:00
Commented Aug 9, 2013 at 7:58 — Assaf Lavie
– Assaf Lavie, Commented Aug 9, 2013 at 7:58

alfonsodev · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-09 07:47:45Z

11

You can skip the credential configuration, if you have the env vars
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
The AWS SDK will read those vars by default

If you still want to go with loading credentials from file, check that credentials.json has valid JSON.

Regarding http://aws.amazon.com/sdkfornodejs/ should be something like

{ "accessKeyId": "akid", "secretAccessKey": "secret", "region": "us-west-2" }

Seems like you have access_id where it should be "accessKeyId" and private_key where it should be "secretAccessKey"

edited Aug 9, 2013 at 7:47

answered Aug 9, 2013 at 7:40

alfonsodev

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6 Comments

Praneeth Wanigasekera Over a year ago

Thanks! That's exactly what was going on. I was using a credentials JSON example for AWS with Ruby and didn't realize that it was slightly different for Node.

trainoasis Over a year ago

I have AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY set in .bash_profile but AWS SDK does not seem to recognize them. Any ideas perhaps ?

alfonsodev Over a year ago

@trainoasis make sure the vars are loaded in the environment execute env | grep AWS

trainoasis Over a year ago

Yup, it's in there. Oh, idiot me. Node can probably read these vars, but plain JS can't, this solution doesn't apply. But with plain JS people need to log-in actually to authorize right? Or do you know of any other safe approaches? Thanks!

alfonsodev Over a year ago

ok, you mean from browser, then you would need to use signature v4 requests docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/sigv4_signing.html

|

Praneeth Wanigasekera · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-09 08:16:46Z

2

Found the answer to this. For some bizarre reason, Amazon uses different field names for credentials in Node vs. other frameworks (e.g. Ruby).

In Ruby, just the two first items are:

"access_id": "[Your AWS Access Key ID]",
"private_key": "[Your AWS Secret Access Key]",

While in Node.js, these same items are:

"accessKeyId": "[Your AWS Access Key ID]",
"secretAccessKey": "[Your AWS Secret Access Key]",

Changed the names in the credentials JSON to the latter and the error is gone. Why couldn't it be the same?

answered Aug 9, 2013 at 8:16

Praneeth Wanigasekera

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1 Comment

Great Turtle Over a year ago

> Why couldn't it be the same? I don't know for sure, but most likely the difference is because standard JS naming practices are to use lowercaseCamelCase for simple variables and CapitalCamelCase for class names. Probably that if I had to guess.

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