aws / aws/containers-roadmap

[EKS] [request]: Support getting EKS token without AWS CLI

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EKS Proposed
Dominant language
Shell
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Description

### Community Note

* Please vote on this issue by adding a 👍 [reaction](https://blog.github.com/2016-03-10-add-reactions-to-pull-requests-issues-and-comments/) to the original issue to help the community and maintainers prioritize this request
* Please do not leave "+1" or "me too" comments, they generate extra noise for issue followers and do not help prioritize the request
* If you are interested in working on this issue or have submitted a pull request, please leave a comment

**Tell us about your request**

Currently the only ways to get a token to authenticate with the Kube API server is to either run `aws eks update-kubeconfig` or `aws eks get-token`. I am requesting that the latter be turned into a standard AWS EKS API operation that can be called through any AWS SDK.

**Which service(s) is this request for?**
EKS

**Tell us about the problem you're trying to solve. What are you trying to do, and why is it hard?**
I don't like having the AWS CLI in the critical path of EKS automation I'm writing. We've been burned too often with writing a project that we think is self-contained with no dependencies but actually implicitly depends on the AWS CLI. Additionally, the AWS CLI isn't that fast (which is fine for a CLI, but is annoying for automation that we write).

**Are you currently working around this issue?**
Just using `aws eks get-token`

**Additional context**
I'm somewhat surprised that `get-token` isn't already an API method, it feels like it should be.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start with the existing aws eks get-token and aws eks update-kubeconfig flows, then review how EKS authentication reaches the Kubernetes API server. Done means defining and delivering an EKS API operation that provides the token through an AWS SDK without requiring the AWS CLI.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
aws, kubernetes
Domain
api, authentication, cloud
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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