What is a keyName in AWS ( Amazon Web Services )?

Question

So, I began studying the upload mechanism with AWS. Also, watching several other examples, I have noticed that I don't actually get one thing ( even though I have read the documentation over and over, at those specific parts). At the creation of a AWS account, you are given a key. But also, there is the notion of ObjectKey.

So, given this example : http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/UploadObjSingleOpJava.html

especially, this piece of code :

private static String bucketName     = "*** Provide bucket name ***";
private static String keyName        = "*** Provide key ***";
private static String uploadFileName = "*** Provide file name ***";

I have to ask : what does that keyName represent ? It is the name of the object ( name that will be found in the bucket ) or is it the secret key given on account creation?

Answer 1

AWS S3 is, at the most basic level, just a key/value store. When you upload an object (file) to S3 you specify a unique public key for the object. In S3 the keys look like file paths, which can lead to some confusion since you don't need to do things like create subdirectories, etc. What this means, in a nutshell, is that you can upload a file using a key like /some/key/to/an/image/file.jpg without first having to create the path /some/key/to/an/image.

If you have static web hosting enabled for your S3 bucket then as soon as you upload file.jpg using this key then you should be able to view it in your web browser via a URL along the lines of https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/<bucket_name>/some/key/to/an/image/file.jpg, depending on the region that the bucket is located in.

Answer 2

The keyName is the "name" (=unique identifier) by which your file will be stored in the S3 bucket.

For example :

 private static String uploadFileName = "c:\mydir\myfile.txt";
 private static String keyName ="mydirinbucket/myfile.txt";

(N.B. You can use "/" characters to use "directories" in your S3 bucket )