Programming Amazon Web Services

Chapter 4. S3 Applications

The Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) can be used in a number of ways to meet many different storage needs. You can use it as a basic online file repository for backing up files, for web site hosting, as the basis for a network-mounted filesystem, or as a distribution network. In this chapter we discuss how you can use S3 to fulfill some common tasks by taking advantage of some of the available tools, software libraries, or third-party services.

The S3 developer ecosystem is very active, and much of the third-party software available is open source and free. In many cases you can achieve a great deal without having to write your own code, and even if you have specific needs not yet met by existing software, there are mature libraries available in a range of languages that you can use to build your own solution.

Share Large Files

A very simple application for S3 involves using the service as a repository for sharing files that are too large to include in an email. There are a number of online services already available to do this job, but many charge monthly subscription fees if you need to share very large files; with S3 you can do this yourself at little cost.

To share a file with your friends or colleagues, you will need to upload the file to S3 and send a URI link to the S3 object in an email. Because your files may contain private information, we will keep them private by generating a signed Universal Resource Identifier (URI) link to the object so that ...