title: How to run an existing aws amplify project
body: <p>I have been asked to work on an existing <code>aws amplify</code> <code>reactJs</code> project. Normally I would simply clone the project repo from either github or bitbucket, but this project is am amplify project and requires a whole set of configuration. I have several aws profiles set-up on the cli, and have access to the aws cludservices for this project, but cannot run the app locally because my <code>aws-exports.js</code> file does not have the required auhtentication configurations in it.</p>
  
  <p>According to the <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/mobile/amplify-cli-adds-scaffolding-support-for-amplify-apps-and-authoring-plugins/" rel="noreferrer">amplify cli docs</a> for an existing project, I should just be able to run <code>amplify init --app https://bitbucket.org/brooklynva/brooklyn-ocr-poc.git</code>. However this tried, and thankfully failed, to update the cloudformation stack on aws. It updated the <code>aws-exports.js</code> file but only with this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>// WARNING: DO NOT EDIT. This file is automatically generated by AWS Amplify. It will be overwritten.
  
  const awsmobile = {
      "aws_project_region": "us-east-2"
  };
  
  
  export default awsmobile;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So I then found that running <code>amplify pull --frontend</code> with some other parameters which I put into a bash file would be the equivalent of running <code>git pull</code>. After running that command, still nothing was updated in the config file.</p>
  
  <pre><code>#!/bin/bash
  set -e
  IFS='|'
  
  REACTCONFIG="{\
  \"SourceDir\":\"src\",\
  \"DistributionDir\":\"build\",\
  \"BuildCommand\":\"npm run-script build\",\
  \"StartCommand\":\"npm run-script start\"\
  }"
  FRONTEND="{\
  \"frontend\":\"javascript\",\
  \"framework\":\"react\",\
  \"config\":$REACTCONFIG\
  }"
  
  amplify pull \
  --frontend $FRONTEND \
  --yes
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So my question remains, how do I start an already existing <code>aws amplify</code> app from an existing project and generate the configuration file necessary to run the app locally without having the person who created the app, share that config file with me?</p>