Organizing files in S3

Question

I have a social media web application. Users upload pictures such as profile picture, project pictures, and etc. What's the best way to organize these files in a S3 bucket?

I thought of creating a folder with userid as its name inside the bucket and the inside that multiple other folders i.e. profile, projects and etc.

Not sure if that's the best approach to follow!

Answer 1

The names (Keys) you assign an object in Amazon S3 are frankly irrelevant.

What matters is that you have a database that tracks the objects, their ownership and their purpose.

You should not use the filename (Key) of an Amazon S3 object as a way of storing information about the object, because your application might have millions of objects in S3 and it is too slow to scan the list of objects to see which ones exist. Instead, consult a database to find them.

To answer your question: Yes, create a prefix by username if you wish, but then just give it a unique name (eg a Universally unique identifier - Wikipedia) that avoids name clashes.