How to format a URL to get a file from Amazon S3?

Question

I am having some trouble figuring out how to access a file from Amazon S3. Lets say that the bucket that the file lives in is BUCKET_NAME, the file is FILE_NAME, etc. I have tried the following two URLs:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/BUCKET_NAME/FILE_NAME/
?Expires=EXPIRATION
&Signature=SIGNATURE
&SignatureVersion=2
&SignatureMethod=HmacSHA1
&AWSAccessKeyId=KEYID

But this gives me the following error:

<Code>NoSuchKey</Code>
<Message>The specified key does not exist.</Message>

I have also tried:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/BUCKET_NAME/
?Key=FILE_NAME
&Expires=EXPIRATION
&Signature=SIGNATURE
&SignatureVersion=2
&SignatureMethod=HmacSHA1
&AWSAccessKeyId=KEYID

but this returns a webpage with a list of all of the files in the given bucket (including FILE_NAME), instead of the specific file I want. I have also tried throwing in Action=GetObject into the URL as well but that doesn't seem to change anything.

It would be helpful to find out which (if any) is the proper method and what I am doing wrong. I have been digging through Amazon's documentation for a while now but I can't seem to sort it out.

for programmers looking. thought i would add this http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/ShareObjectPreSignedURL.html — dibble, Dec 11 '15 at 15:22

score 72 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 28 '11 at 18:55

72

Its actually formulated more like:

https://<bucket-name>.s3.amazonaws.com/<key>

See here

answered Oct 28 '11 at 18:55

stevebot

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Thanks for the response. I have also tried the way that you mentioned, but with the same results. – user1018928 Oct 28 '11 at 19:18
@user1018928 Is it a versioned bucket? Also to consider is if the key is deleted. – stevebot Oct 28 '11 at 20:57

score 35 · Answer 2 · edited Jan 17 '20 at 13:10

35

Documentation here, and I'll use the Frankfurt region as an example.

There are 2 different URL styles:

Virtual host style: https://BUCKET.s3.amazonaws.com/FILE
Path style: https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/BUCKET/FILE

But this url does not work:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/BUCKET/FILE

The message is explicit: The bucket you are attempting to access must be addressed using the specified endpoint. Please send all future requests to this endpoint.

I may be talking about another problem because I'm not getting NoSuchKey error but I suspect the error message has been made clearer over time.

edited Jan 17 '20 at 13:10

siberiancrane

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answered Sep 16 '15 at 13:20

Sebastien Lorber

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5

Path style URLs are deprecated. AWS will drop support for them at some point in the future. See https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-s3-path-deprecation-plan-the-rest-of-the-story/ – oxley Jan 25 '21 at 19:00

score 20 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 02 '14 at 14:16

20

Perhaps not what the OP was after, but for those searching the URL to simply access a readable object on S3 is more like:

https://<region>.amazonaws.com/<bucket-name>/<key>

Where <region> is something like s3-ap-southeast-2.

Click on the item in the S3 GUI to get the link for your bucket.

answered Jul 02 '14 at 14:16

orlade

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Putting the bucket name in the path instead of the domain is deprecated. – Aleksandr Dubinsky Nov 07 '21 at 13:04

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 08 '19 at 22:59

As @stevebot said, do this:

https://<bucket-name>.s3.amazonaws.com/<key>

The one important thing I would like to add is that you either have to make your bucket objects all publicly accessible OR you can add a custom policy to your bucket policy. That custom policy could allow traffic from your network IP range or a different credential.

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 26 '21 at 20:31

1

Note that if you're in a different AWS partition, such as US GovCloud or China then you'll have a slightly different URL pattern.

https://<bucket-name>.s3-<region-name>.amazonaws.com/<key> works for GovCloud.

China is something like https://<bucket-name>.s3-<region-name>.amazonaws.com.cn/<key>.

answered Jul 26 '21 at 20:31

jgibson

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Only problem I see is the hyphen between s3 and region name, I've added an answer very similar to this – Robert Rendell Mar 08 '23 at 20:04

Robert Rendell · Answer 6 · 2023-03-08T20:16:37.123

0

The date is 08.03.23 and the current way to format the url is this:

https://<bucket>.s3.<region>.amazonaws.com/<key>

edited Mar 08 '23 at 20:16

answered Mar 08 '23 at 20:04

Robert Rendell

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How to format a URL to get a file from Amazon S3?

6 Answers6

There are 2 different URL styles:

Linked

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