Is there now a way to get "AWS region names" in boto3?

Question

Is there now a way in boto3 to convert AWS region codes to AWS region names, e.g to convert ('us-west-1', 'us-east-1', 'us-west-2') to ('N. California', 'N. Virginia', 'Oregon')?

I can get a list of AWS region codes with the following snippet:

 from boto3.session import Session
 s = Session()
 regions = s.get_available_regions('rds')
 print("regions:", regions)

$ python3 regions.py
regions: ['ap-northeast-1', 'ap-northeast-2', 'ap-south-1', 'ap-southeast-1', 'ap-southeast-2', 'ca-central-1', 'eu-central-1', 'eu-west-1', 'eu-west-2', 'eu-west-3', 'sa-east-1', 'us-east-1', 'us-east-2', 'us-west-1', 'us-west-2']

Is there an equivalent snippet that would give me the AWS region names?

Answer 1

This is the solution I arrived at, which shows all the AWS/EC2 region IDs and names:

   $cat so_regions2.py

    import boto3
    
    region = "us-east-1"
    print("Using region:", region)
    
    ec2 = boto3.client("ec2", region_name=region)
    ec2_responses = ec2.describe_regions()
    ssm_client = boto3.client('ssm', region_name=region)
    for resp in ec2_responses['Regions']:
        region_id = resp['RegionName']
        tmp = '/aws/service/global-infrastructure/regions/%s/longName' % region_id
        ssm_response = ssm_client.get_parameter(Name = tmp)
        region_name = ssm_response['Parameter']['Value'] 
        print ("region_id:",region_id,"region_name:",region_name)

    $ python3 so_regions2.py
    Using region: us-east-1
    region_id: eu-north-1 region_name: EU (Stockholm)
    region_id: ap-south-1 region_name: Asia Pacific (Mumbai)
    region_id: eu-west-3 region_name: EU (Paris)
    region_id: eu-west-2 region_name: EU (London)
    region_id: eu-west-1 region_name: EU (Ireland)
    region_id: ap-northeast-2 region_name: Asia Pacific (Seoul)
    region_id: ap-northeast-1 region_name: Asia Pacific (Tokyo)
    region_id: sa-east-1 region_name: South America (Sao Paulo)
    region_id: ca-central-1 region_name: Canada (Central)
    region_id: ap-southeast-1 region_name: Asia Pacific (Singapore)
    region_id: ap-southeast-2 region_name: Asia Pacific (Sydney)
    region_id: eu-central-1 region_name: EU (Frankfurt)
    region_id: us-east-1 region_name: US East (N. Virginia)
    region_id: us-east-2 region_name: US East (Ohio)
    region_id: us-west-1 region_name: US West (N. California)
    region_id: us-west-2 region_name: US West (Oregon)

Answer 2

Edit: As mentioned by @jogold, with the recent launch of Query for AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store, I'd advise using that to directly query from AWS instead of the custom script in my answer.

---

As per the boto3 docs, there is no native functionality for describing the colloquial names of the regions.

Here's a small script with a function, convertRegionCodesToNames(), that takes a list of valid region IDs and converts them to their common names. Add error handling as needed for invalid inputs, zero length arrays, or other possible responses returned by boto3.

# replace `regions` variable with the output from the get_available_instances() response

regions = ['ap-northeast-1', 'ap-northeast-2', 'ap-south-1', 'ap-southeast-1', 'ap-southeast-2', 'ca-central-1', 'eu-central-1', 'eu-west-1', 'eu-west-2', 'eu-west-3', 'sa-east-1', 'us-east-1', 'us-east-2', 'us-west-1', 'us-west-2']

def convertRegionCodesToNames(regions):
    # static dict of all region key-value pairs
    region_dict = {
      "us-east-1": "N. Virginia",
      "us-east-2": "Ohio",
      "us-west-1": "N. California",
      "us-west-2": "Oregon",
      "ca-central-1": "Central",
      "eu-west-1": "Ireland",
      "eu-central-1": "Frankfurt",
      "eu-west-2": "London",
      "eu-west-3": "Paris",
      "eu-north-1": "Stockholm",
      "ap-northeast-1": "Tokyo",
      "ap-northeast-2": "Seoul",
      "ap-southeast-1": "Singapore",
      "ap-southeast-2": "Sydney",
      "ap-south-1": "Mumbai",
      "sa-east-1": "São Paulo",
      "us-gov-west-1": "US Gov West 1",
      "us-gov-east-1": "US Gov East 1"
    } 

    for i in range(len(regions)):
        regions[i] = region_dict[regions[i]]

    return regions

converted_regions = convertRegionCodesToNames(regions)
print("regions:", converted_regions) 

Once added, running $ python3 regions.py will output:

regions: ['Tokyo', 'Seoul', 'Mumbai', 'Singapore', 'Sydney', 'Central', 'Frankfurt', 'Ireland', 'London', 'Paris', 'São Paulo', 'N. Virginia', 'Ohio', 'N. California', 'Oregon']

Answer 3

AWS just released a feature that allows to query for AWS Regions, Endpoints, and More Using AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store.

Using this feature and boto3, you can do something like this:

import boto3

client = boto3.client('ssm')

response = client.get_parameter(
    Name='/aws/service/global-infrastructure/regions/us-west-1/longName'
)

region_name = response['Parameter']['Value'] # US West (N. California)

To get all available regions you can first use get_parameters_by_path() using the following path /aws/service/global-infrastructure/regions.

Note: even though this is public data, it requires proper IAM permissions.