Borislav Hadzhiev
Reading time·2 min
Photo from Unsplash
To tail your CloudWatch logs in real-time, add the --follow
parameter to the
aws logs tail
command. The command tails the logs for a specific CloudWatch
log group.
By setting the --follow
parameter, the command continuously polls for new
logs.
The following example shows how to tail the logs of a lambda function using the AWS CLI:
aws logs tail "/aws/lambda/your-lambda-name" --follow
The syntax of the command looks as follows:
aws logs tail "YOUR_LOG_GROUP_NAME" --follow
By default, the logs tail command prints the:
For a more readable version, set the --format
parameter to short
.
aws logs tail "/aws/lambda/your-lambda-name" --follow --format short
The short version prints only the timestamp and the log messages.
The aws logs tail
command also enables us to view the generated logs of a
CloudWatch log group for a specific time period.
To return the logs from a specific time period, use the --since
parameter:
# Display the logs from the past 30 minutes aws logs tail "/aws/lambda/your-lambda-name" --follow --since 30m # Display the logs from the past 10 seconds aws logs tail "/aws/lambda/your-lambda-name" --follow --since 10s # Display the logs from the past 3 hours aws logs tail "/aws/lambda/your-lambda-name" --follow --since 3h # Display the logs from the past 2 days aws logs tail "/aws/lambda/your-lambda-name" --follow --since 2d # Display the logs from the past 3 weeks aws logs tail "/aws/lambda/your-lambda-name" --follow --since 3w
You can filter which log messages the aws logs tail
command displays to your
terminal, by using the --filter-pattern
parameter.
The following example only returns log messages that include the string Hello
.
aws logs tail "/aws/lambda/your-lambda-name" --follow --format short --filter-pattern "Hello"
The following example returns log messages that include the string Hello
OR
the string END
.
aws logs tail "/aws/lambda/your-lambda-name" --follow --format short --filter-pattern "?Hello ?END"
?
character.You can read more about the filter syntax for the aws logs tail
command by
going to the
docs.