| « PreviousNext » | |
   | Did this page help you? Yes | No | Tell us about it... |
Index Document Support
An index document is a webpage that is returned when a request is made to the root of a
website or any subfolder. For example, if a user enters
http://www.example.com in the browser, the user is not requesting
any specific page. In that case, Amazon S3 serves up the index document, which is
sometimes referred to as the default page
When you configure your bucket as a website, you should provide the name of the index document. You must upload an object with this name and configure it to be publicly readable.
The trailing slash at the root-level URL is optional. For example, if you configure your
website with index.html as the index document, either of the following
two URLs will return index.html.
http://example-bucket.s3-website-region.amazonaws.com/ http://example-bucket.s3-website-region.amazonaws.com
Index Documents and Folders
In Amazon S3, a bucket is a flat container of objects; it does not provide any hierarchical organization as the file system on your computer does. You can create a logical hierarchy by using object key names that imply a folder structure. For example, consider a bucket with three objects and the following key names.
sample1.jpg
photos/2006/Jan/sample2.jpg
photos/2006/Feb/sample3.jpg
Although these are stored with no physical hierarchical organization, you can infer the following logical folder structure from the key names.
sample1.jpg object is at the root of the bucket
sample2.jpg object is in the photos/2006/Jan subfolder,
and
sample3.jpg object is in photos/2006/Feb subfolder.
The folder concept that Amazon S3 console supports is based on object key names. To
continue the previous example, the console displays the
ExampleBucket with a photos folder.
You can upload objects to the bucket or to the photos folder within the
bucket. If you add the object sample.jpg to the bucket, the key
name is sample.jpg. If you upload the object to the
photos folder, the object key name is
photos/sample.jpg.
If you create such a folder structure in your bucket, you must have an index document at
each level. When a user specifies a URL that resembles a folder lookup, the
presence or absence of a trailing slash determines the behavior of the website.
For example, the following URL, with a trailing slash, returns the
photos/index.html index document.
http://example-bucket.s3-website-region.amazonaws.com/photos/
However, if you exclude the trailing slash from the preceding URL, Amazon S3 first looks
for an object photos in the bucket. If the photos
object is not found, then it searches for an index document,
photos/index.html. If that document is found, Amazon S3 returns a
302 Found message and points to the photos/ key.
For subsequent requests to photos/, Amazon S3 returns
photos/index.html. If the index document is not found, Amazon
S3 returns an error.
