View incoming records in a Kinesis stream in real time

kinesis_tail.py

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys
import boto.kinesis

region, stream = sys.argv[1:3]
kinesis = boto.kinesis.connect_to_region(region)
response = kinesis.describe_stream(stream)
if response['StreamDescription']['StreamStatus'] == 'ACTIVE':
    shard_id = response['StreamDescription']['Shards'][0]['ShardId']
else:
    raise 'Stream not active, aborting...'

response = kinesis.get_shard_iterator(stream, shard_id, 'LATEST')
shard_iterator = response['ShardIterator']

while True:
    response = kinesis.get_records(shard_iterator)
    shard_iterator = response['NextShardIterator']

    for record in response['Records']:
        print record['Data']