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AWS Documentation » AWS Command Line Interface » User Guide » Using the AWS CLI to Work with AWS Services » Using Amazon S3 with the AWS CLI » Using High-Level (s3) Commands with the AWS CLI
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Using High-Level (s3) Commands with the AWS CLI

This topic describes how you can manage Amazon S3 buckets and objects using high-level aws s3 commands.

Before you run any commands, set your default credentials. For more information, see Configuring the AWS CLI.

Managing Buckets

High-level aws s3 commands support common bucket operations, such as creating, listing, and deleting buckets.

Creating a Bucket

Use the s3 mb command to create a bucket. Bucket names must be globally unique and should be DNS compliant. Bucket names can contain lowercase letters, numbers, hyphens, and periods. Bucket names can start and end only with a letter or number, and cannot contain a period next to a hyphen or another period. 

$ aws s3 mb s3://bucket-name

Listing Your Buckets

Use the s3 ls command to list your buckets. Here are some examples of common usage.

The following command lists all buckets.

$ aws s3 ls
2018-12-11 17:08:50 my-bucket
2018-12-14 14:55:44 my-bucket2

The following command lists all objects and folders (referred to in S3 as 'prefixes') in a bucket. 

$ aws s3 ls s3://bucket-name
                           PRE path/
2018-12-04 19:05:48          3 MyFile1.txt

The previous output shows that under the prefix path/ there exists one file named MyFile1.txt.

You can filter the output to a specific prefix by including it in the command. The following command lists the objects in bucket-name/path (that is, objects in bucket-name filtered by the prefix path/). 

$ aws s3 ls s3://bucket-name/path/
2018-12-06 18:59:32          3 MyFile2.txt

Deleting a Bucket

To remove a bucket, use the s3 rb command. 

$ aws s3 rb s3://bucket-name

By default, the bucket must be empty for the operation to succeed. To remove a non-empty bucket, you need to include the --force option.

The following example deletes all objects and subfolders in the bucket and then removes the bucket. 

$ aws s3 rb s3://bucket-name --force

Note

If you're using a versioned bucket that contains previously deleted—but retained—objects, this command does not allow you to remove the bucket. You must first remove all of the content.

Managing Objects

The high-level aws s3 commands make it convenient to manage Amazon S3 objects. The object commands include s3 cp, s3 ls, s3 mv, s3 rm, and s3 sync.

The cp, ls, mv, and rm commands work similarly to their Unix counterparts and enable you to work seamlessly across your local directories and Amazon S3 buckets. The sync command synchronizes the contents of a bucket and a directory, or two buckets.

Note

All high-level commands that involve uploading objects into an Amazon S3 bucket (s3 cp, s3 mv, and s3 sync) automatically perform a multipart upload when the object is large.

Failed uploads can't be resumed when using these commands. If the multipart upload fails due to a timeout or is manually canceled by pressing Ctrl+C, the AWS CLI cleans up any files created and aborts the upload. This process can take several minutes.

If the process is interrupted by a kill command or system failure, the in-progress multipart upload remains in Amazon S3 and must be cleaned up manually in the AWS Management Console or with the s3api abort-multipart-upload command.

The cp, mv, and sync commands include a --grants option that you can use to grant permissions on the object to specified users or groups. Set the --grants option to a list of permissions using following syntax. 

--grants Permission=Grantee_Type=Grantee_ID
         [Permission=Grantee_Type=Grantee_ID ...]

Each value contains the following elements:

  • Permission – Specifies the granted permissions, and can be set to read, readacl, writeacl, or full.

  • Grantee_Type – Specifies how to identify the grantee, and can be set to uri, emailaddress, or id.

  • Grantee_ID – Specifies the grantee based on Grantee_Type.

    • uri – The group's URI. For more information, see Who Is a Grantee?

    • emailaddress – The account's email address.

    • id – The account's canonical ID.

For more information on Amazon S3 access control, see Access Control.

The following example copies an object into a bucket. It grants read permissions on the object to everyone and full permissions (read, readacl, and writeacl) to the account associated with user@example.com. 

$ aws s3 cp file.txt s3://my-bucket/ --grants read=uri=http://acs.amazonaws.com/groups/global/AllUsers full=emailaddress=user@example.com

You can also specify a nondefault storage class (REDUCED_REDUNDANCY or STANDARD_IA) for objects that you upload to Amazon S3. To do this, use the --storage-class option. 

$ aws s3 cp file.txt s3://my-bucket/ --storage-class REDUCED_REDUNDANCY

The s3 sync command uses the following syntax. Possible source-target combinations are:

  • Local file system to Amazon S3

  • Amazon S3 to local file system

  • Amazon S3 to Amazon S3

$ aws s3 sync <source> <target> [--options]

The following example synchronizes the contents of an Amazon S3 folder named path in my-bucket with the current working directory. s3 sync updates any files that have a different size or modified time than files with the same name at the destination. The output displays specific operations performed during the sync. Notice that the operation recursively synchronizes the subdirectory MySubdirectory and its contents with s3://my-bucket/path/MySubdirectory. 

$ aws s3 sync . s3://my-bucket/path
upload: MySubdirectory\MyFile3.txt to s3://my-bucket/path/MySubdirectory/MyFile3.txt
upload: MyFile2.txt to s3://my-bucket/path/MyFile2.txt
upload: MyFile1.txt to s3://my-bucket/path/MyFile1.txt

Typically, s3 sync only copies missing or outdated files or objects between the source and target. However, you can also supply the --delete option to remove files or objects from the target that are not present in the source.

The following example, which extends the previous one, shows how this works.

// Delete local file
$ rm ./MyFile1.txt

// Attempt sync without --delete option - nothing happens
$ aws s3 sync . s3://my-bucket/path

// Sync with deletion - object is deleted from bucket
$ aws s3 sync . s3://my-bucket/path --delete
delete: s3://my-bucket/path/MyFile1.txt

// Delete object from bucket
$ aws s3 rm s3://my-bucket/path/MySubdirectory/MyFile3.txt
delete: s3://my-bucket/path/MySubdirectory/MyFile3.txt

// Sync with deletion - local file is deleted
$ aws s3 sync s3://my-bucket/path . --delete
delete: MySubdirectory\MyFile3.txt

// Sync with Infrequent Access storage class
$ aws s3 sync . s3://my-bucket/path --storage-class STANDARD_IA

You can use the --exclude and --include options to specify rules that filter the files or objects to copy during the sync operation. By default, all items in a specified folder are included in the sync. Therefore, --include is needed only when you have to specify exceptions to the --exclude option (that is, --include effectively means "don't exclude"). The options apply in the order that's specified, as shown in the following example. 

Local directory contains 3 files:
MyFile1.txt
MyFile2.rtf
MyFile88.txt
'''
$ aws s3 sync . s3://my-bucket/path --exclude "*.txt"
upload: MyFile2.rtf to s3://my-bucket/path/MyFile2.rtf
'''
$ aws s3 sync . s3://my-bucket/path --exclude "*.txt" --include "MyFile*.txt"
upload: MyFile1.txt to s3://my-bucket/path/MyFile1.txt
upload: MyFile88.txt to s3://my-bucket/path/MyFile88.txt
upload: MyFile2.rtf to s3://my-bucket/path/MyFile2.rtf
'''
$ aws s3 sync . s3://my-bucket/path --exclude "*.txt" --include "MyFile*.txt" --exclude "MyFile?.txt"
upload: MyFile2.rtf to s3://my-bucket/path/MyFile2.rtf
upload: MyFile88.txt to s3://my-bucket/path/MyFile88.txt

The --exclude and --include options also filter files or objects to be deleted during an s3 sync operation that includes the --delete option. In this case, the parameter string must specify files to exclude from, or include for, deletion in the context of the target directory or bucket. The following shows an example. 

Assume local directory and s3://my-bucket/path currently in sync and each contains 3 files:
MyFile1.txt
MyFile2.rtf
MyFile88.txt
'''
// Delete local .txt files
$ rm *.txt

// Sync with delete, excluding files that match a pattern. MyFile88.txt is deleted, while remote MyFile1.txt is not.
$ aws s3 sync . s3://my-bucket/path --delete --exclude "my-bucket/path/MyFile?.txt"
delete: s3://my-bucket/path/MyFile88.txt
'''
// Delete MyFile2.rtf
$ aws s3 rm s3://my-bucket/path/MyFile2.rtf

// Sync with delete, excluding MyFile2.rtf - local file is NOT deleted
$ aws s3 sync s3://my-bucket/path . --delete --exclude "./MyFile2.rtf"
download: s3://my-bucket/path/MyFile1.txt to MyFile1.txt
'''
// Sync with delete, local copy of MyFile2.rtf is deleted
$ aws s3 sync s3://my-bucket/path . --delete
delete: MyFile2.rtf

The s3 sync command also accepts an --acl option, by which you may set the access permissions for files copied to Amazon S3. The --acl option accepts private, public-read, and public-read-write values. 

$ aws s3 sync . s3://my-bucket/path --acl public-read

As previously mentioned, the s3 command set includes cp, mv, ls, and rm, and they work in similar ways to their Unix counterparts. The following are some examples. 

// Copy MyFile.txt in current directory to s3://my-bucket/path
$ aws s3 cp MyFile.txt s3://my-bucket/path/

// Move all .jpg files in s3://my-bucket/path to ./MyDirectory
$ aws s3 mv s3://my-bucket/path ./MyDirectory --exclude "*" --include "*.jpg" --recursive

// List the contents of my-bucket
$ aws s3 ls s3://my-bucket

// List the contents of path in my-bucket
$ aws s3 ls s3://my-bucket/path/

// Delete s3://my-bucket/path/MyFile.txt
$ aws s3 rm s3://my-bucket/path/MyFile.txt

// Delete s3://my-bucket/path and all of its contents
$ aws s3 rm s3://my-bucket/path --recursive

When you use the --recursive option on a directory or folder with cp, mv, or rm, the command walks the directory tree, including all subdirectories. These commands also accept the --exclude, --include, and --acl options as the sync command does.