Server mode

Moto has a stand-alone server mode. This allows you to utilize the backend structure of Moto even if you don’t use Python.

It uses flask, which isn’t a default dependency. You can install the server ‘extra’ package with:

pip install moto[server]

You can then start it running a service:

$ moto_server ec2

You can also pass the port:

$ moto_server ec2 -p3000
 * Running on http://127.0.0.1:3000/

If you want to be able to use the server externally you can pass an IP address to bind to as a hostname or allow any of your external interfaces with 0.0.0.0:

$ moto_server ec2 -H 0.0.0.0
 * Running on http://0.0.0.0:5000/

Please be aware this might allow other network users to access your server.

Then go to localhost to see a list of running instances (it will be empty since you haven’t added any yet).

If you want to use boto3 with this, you can pass an endpoint_url to the resource

boto3.resource(
    service_name='s3',
    region_name='us-west-1',
    endpoint_url='http://localhost:5000',
)

Other languages

You don’t need to use Python to use Moto; it can be used with any language. Here are some examples to run it with other languages:

Install with Homebrew

Moto is also available to install using Homebrew, which makes it much easier to manage if you’re not using Python as your primary development language.

Once Homebrew is installed, you can install Moto by running:

brew install moto

To make the Moto server start up automatically when you log into your computer, you can run:

brew services start moto