Amazon S3 buckets#

An Amazon S3 bucket is a storage location to hold files. S3 files are referred to as objects.

This section describes how to use the AWS SDK for Python to perform common operations on S3 buckets.

Create an Amazon S3 bucket#

The name of an Amazon S3 bucket must be unique across all regions of the AWS platform. The bucket can be located in a specific region to minimize latency or to address regulatory requirements.

import logging
import boto3
from botocore.exceptions import ClientError


def create_bucket(bucket_name, region=None):
    """Create an S3 bucket in a specified region

    If a region is not specified, the bucket is created in the S3 default
    region (us-east-1).

    :param bucket_name: Bucket to create
    :param region: String region to create bucket in, e.g., 'us-west-2'
    :return: True if bucket created, else False
    """

    # Create bucket
    try:
        if region is None:
            s3_client = boto3.client('s3')
            s3_client.create_bucket(Bucket=bucket_name)
        else:
            s3_client = boto3.client('s3', region_name=region)
            location = {'LocationConstraint': region}
            s3_client.create_bucket(Bucket=bucket_name,
                                    CreateBucketConfiguration=location)
    except ClientError as e:
        logging.error(e)
        return False
    return True

List existing buckets#

List all the existing buckets for the AWS account.

# Retrieve the list of existing buckets
s3 = boto3.client('s3')
response = s3.list_buckets()

# Output the bucket names
print('Existing buckets:')
for bucket in response['Buckets']:
    print(f'  {bucket["Name"]}')