Chapter 3. S3 Recipes

Problem

Before you can store anything in S3, you need to first create a bucket to contain the objects.

Solution

Use the create_bucket method to create a new bucket.

Discussion

Example 3-1 shows a function that takes the name of the bucket you want to create as a parameter. It will then try to create that bucket. If the bucket already exists, it will print an error.

Example 3-1. Create a Bucket

import boto

def create_bucket(bucket_name):
    """
    Create a bucket.  If the bucket already exists and you have
    access to it, no error will be returned by AWS.
    Note that bucket names are global to S3
    so you need to choose a unique name.
    """
    s3 = boto.connect_s3()

    # First let's see if we already have a bucket of this name.
    # The lookup method will return a Bucket object if the
    # bucket exists and we have access to it or None.
    bucket = s3.lookup(bucket_name)
    if bucket:
        print 'Bucket (%s) already exists' % bucket_name
    else:
        # Let's try to create the bucket.  This will fail if
        # the bucket has already been created by someone else.
        try:
            bucket = s3.create_bucket(bucket_name)
        except s3.provider.storage_create_error, e:
            print 'Bucket (%s) is owned by another user' % bucket_name
    return bucket