Using high-level (s3) commands with the AWS CLI

The following example creates the s3://bucket-name bucket.

$ aws s3 mb s3://bucket-name

The following example lists all of your Amazon S3 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 prefixes in a bucket. In this example output, the prefix example/ has one file named MyFile1.txt.

$ aws s3 ls s3://bucket-name
                           PRE example/
2018-12-04 19:05:48          3 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/example/ (that is, objects in bucket-name filtered by the prefix example/).

$ aws s3 ls s3://bucket-name/example/
2018-12-06 18:59:32          3 MyFile1.txt

The following example removes the s3://bucket-name bucket.

$ aws s3 rb s3://bucket-name

By default, the bucket must be empty for the operation to succeed. To remove a bucket that's not empty, you need to include the --force option. 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.

The following example deletes all objects and prefixes in the bucket, and then deletes the bucket.

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

The following example deletes filename.txt from s3://bucket-name/example.

$ aws s3 rm s3://bucket-name/example/filename.txt --recursive

The following example deletes all objects from s3://bucket-name/example using the --recursive option.

$ aws s3 rm s3://bucket-name/example --recursive

The following example moves all objects from s3://bucket-name/example to s3://my-bucket/.

$ aws s3 mv s3://bucket-name/example s3://my-bucket/

The following example moves a local file from your current working directory to the Amazon S3 bucket with the s3 cp command.

$ aws s3 mv filename.txt s3://bucket-name

The following example moves a file from your Amazon S3 bucket to your current working directory, where ./ specifies your current working directory.

$ aws s3 mv s3://bucket-name/filename.txt ./

The following example copies all objects from s3://bucket-name/example to s3://my-bucket/.

$ aws s3 cp s3://bucket-name/example s3://my-bucket/

The following example copies a local file from your current working directory to the Amazon S3 bucket with the s3 cp command.

$ aws s3 cp filename.txt s3://bucket-name

The following example copies a file from your Amazon S3 bucket to your current working directory, where ./ specifies your current working directory.

$ aws s3 cp s3://bucket-name/filename.txt ./

The following example uses echo to stream the text "hello world" to the s3://bucket-name/filename.txt file.

$ echo "hello world" | aws s3 cp - s3://bucket-name/filename.txt

The following example streams the s3://bucket-name/filename.txt file to stdout and prints the contents to the console.

$ aws s3 cp s3://bucket-name/filename.txt -
hello world

The following example streams the contents of s3://bucket-name/pre to stdout, uses the bzip2 command to compress the files, and uploads the new compressed file named key.bz2 to s3://bucket-name.

$ aws s3 cp s3://bucket-name/pre - | bzip2 --best | aws s3 cp - s3://bucket-name/key.bz2

The following example synchronizes the contents of an Amazon S3 prefix named path in the bucket named my-bucket with the current working directory.

s3 sync updates any files that have a size or modified time that are different from 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

The following example, which extends the previous one, shows how to use the --delete option.

// 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

When using the --delete option, the --exclude and --include options can filter files or objects to delete during an s3 sync operation. 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
'''

// 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 "path/MyFile?.txt"
delete: s3://my-bucket/path/MyFile88.txt
'''

// 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