Download a file from S3 using boto3 python3 lib

How to download a file from Amazon Web Services S3 to your computer using python3 and boto3.

Import boto3

import boto3

(pip3 install boto3 if not installed)

Set region and credentials

First we need to select the region where the bucket is placed and your account credentials.

You can find the region in the url, when you preview the desired bucket https://s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/vperezb/?region=us-east-1
- In this case: region=us-east-1
Copy access and secret from https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/home?#/security_credential
- Security Credentials -> Access keys (access key ID and secret access key) -> Create New Access Key -> Show Access Key

Using Account credentials isn’t a good practise as they give full access to AWS resources http://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/best-practices.html?icmpid=docs_iam_console

REGION = 'us-east-1'
ACCESS_KEY_ID = 'paste_here_your_key_id'
SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = 'paste_here_your_secret_access_key'

Select file location in AWS S3

BUCKET_NAME = 'vperezb'
KEY = 'path/in/s3/namefile.txt' # file path in S3 

Caution: The path does not include the starting /

Select file destination in your computer

PATH_IN_COMPUTER = 'path/in/computer/namefile.txt'

Download the file from S3

s3c = boto3.client(
        's3', 
        region_name = REGION,
        aws_access_key_id = ACCESS_KEY_ID,
        aws_secret_access_key = SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
    )

obj = s3c.get_object(Bucket= BUCKET_NAME , Key = KEY)
file_text = obj['Body'].read().decode('utf-8')

Save the file to disk

with open(PATH_IN_COMPUTER, "w") as myfile:
    myfile.write(file_text)

All togeather

import boto3

REGION = 'us-east-1'
ACCESS_KEY_ID = 'paste_here_your_key_id'
SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = 'paste_here_your_secret_access_key'

BUCKET_NAME = 'vperezb'
KEY = 'path/in/s3/namefile.txt' # file path in S3 

PATH_IN_COMPUTER = 'path/in/computer/namefile.txt'

s3c = boto3.client(
        's3', 
        region_name = REGION,
        aws_access_key_id = ACCESS_KEY_ID,
        aws_secret_access_key = SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
    )

obj = s3c.get_object(Bucket= BUCKET_NAME , Key = KEY)
file_text = obj['Body'].read().decode('utf-8')

with open(PATH_IN_COMPUTER, "w") as myfile:
    myfile.write(file_text)

Written on December 26, 2017