The Response Structure

In response to either a Query or SOAP request, the service returns an XML data structure that conforms to an XML schema defined as part of the EC2 WSDL. The structure of an XML response is specific to the associated request. In general, the response data types are named according to the operation performed and whether the data type is a container (can have children). Examples of containers include groupSet for security groups and keySet for key pairs (see the example that follows). Item elements are children of containers, and their contents vary according to the container's role.

Every EC2 response includes a request ID in a requestId element. The value is a unique string that AWS assigns. If you ever have issues with a particular request, AWS will ask for the request ID to help troubleshoot the issue. The following shows an example response.

<DescribeKeyPairsResponse xmlns="http://ec2.amazonaws.com/doc/2012-04-01/">
  <requestId>7a62c49f-347e-4fc4-9331-6e8eEXAMPLE</requestId>
  <keySet>
    <item>
      <keyName>gsg-keypair</keyName>
      <keyFingerprint>
         00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00
      </keyFingerprint>
    </item>
  </keySet>
</DescribeKeyPairsResponse>