This page is only for existing customers of the S3 Glacier service using Vaults and the original REST API from 2012.
If you're looking for archival storage solutions we suggest using the S3 Glacier storage classes in Amazon S3, S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, and S3 Glacier Deep Archive. To learn more about these storage options, see S3 Glacier storage classes
Using the AWS SDKs with Amazon S3 Glacier
AWS provides SDKs for you to develop applications for Amazon S3 Glacier. The SDK libraries wrap the underlying S3 Glacier API, simplifying your programming tasks. For example, for each request sent to S3 Glacier, you must include a signature to authenticate your requests. When you use the SDK libraries, you need to provide only your AWS security credentials in your code and the libraries compute the necessary signature and include it in the request sent to S3 Glacier. The AWS SDKs provide libraries that map to the underlying REST API and provide objects that you can use to easily construct requests and process responses.
Topics
The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) is a unified tool to manage your AWS services, including
S3 Glacier. For information about downloading the AWS CLI, see AWS Command Line Interface
AWS SDK Libraries for Java and .NET
The AWS SDKs for Java and .NET offer high-level and low-level wrapper libraries.
You can find examples of working with Amazon S3 Glacier by using the AWS SDK for Java and the AWS SDK for .NET throughout this developer guide.
What Is the Low-Level API?
The low-level wrapper libraries map closely the underlying REST API (API Reference for Amazon S3 Glacier) supported by S3 Glacier. For each S3 Glacier REST operations, the low-level API provides a corresponding method, a request object for you to provide request information and a response object for you to process S3 Glacier response. The low-level wrapper libraries are the most complete implementation of the underlying S3 Glacier operations.
For information about these SDK libraries, see Using the AWS SDK for Java with Amazon S3 Glacier and Using the AWS SDK for .NET with Amazon S3 Glacier.
What Is the High-Level API?
To further simplify application development, these libraries offer a higher-level abstraction for some of the operations. For example:
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Uploading an archive—To upload an archive using the low-level API in addition to the file name and the vault name where you want to save the archive, You need to provide a checksum (SHA-256 tree hash) of the payload. However, the high-level API computes the checksum for you.
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Downloading an archive or vault inventory—To download an archive using the low-level API you first initiate a job, wait for the job to complete, and then get the job output. You need to write additional code to set up an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic for S3 Glacier to notify you when the job is complete. You also need some polling mechanism to check if a job completion message was posted to the topic. The high-level API provides a method to download an archive that takes care of all these steps. You only specify an archive ID and a folder path where you want to save the downloaded data.
For information about these SDK libraries, see Using the AWS SDK for Java with Amazon S3 Glacier and Using the AWS SDK for .NET with Amazon S3 Glacier.
When to Use the High-Level and Low-Level API
In general, if the high-level API provides methods you need to perform an operation, you should use the high-level API because of the simplicity it provides. However, if the high-level API does not offer the functionality, you can use the low-level API. Additionally, the low-level API allows granular control of the operation such as retry logic in the event of a failure. For example, when uploading an archive the high-level API uses the file size to determine whether to upload the archive in a single operation or use the multipart upload API. The API also has built-in retry logic in case an upload fails. However, your application might need granular control over these decisions, in which case you can use the low-level API.
