How do I get the S3 key's created date with boto?

Question

Boto's S3 Key object contains last_modified date (which is nicely available via parse_ts, thanks @Gaarnat!) but the base_field "date" (i.e., ctime) doesn't seem to be accessible, even though it's listed in key.base_fields.

Based on the table at http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/UsingMetadata.html, it does seem that it is always automatically created (and I can't imagine a reason why it wouldn't be). It's probably just a simple matter of finding it somewhere in the object attributes, but I haven't been able to find it so far, although I did find the base_fields attribute which contains 'date'. (They're just a set and don't seem to have an available methods and I haven't been able to find documentation regarding ways to inspect them.)

For example, Amazon S3 maintains object creation date and size metadata and uses this information as part of object management.

Interestingly, create_time (system metadata field "Date" in link above) does not show up in the AWS S3 console, either, although last_modified is visible.

Answer 1

Answering the old question, just in case others run into the same issue.

Amazon S3 maintains only the last modified date for each object. For example, the Amazon S3 console shows the Last Modified date in the object Properties pane. When you initially create a new object, this date reflects the date the object is created. If you replace the object, the date changes accordingly. So when we use the term creation date, it is synonymous with the term last modified date.

Reference: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/intro-lifecycle-rules.html