Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

The Amazon SDK for Java 1.x has entered maintenance mode as of July 31, 2024, and will reach end-of-support on December 31, 2025. We recommend that you migrate to the Amazon SDK for Java 2.x to continue receiving new features, availability improvements, and security updates.

Creating, Listing, and Deleting Amazon S3 Buckets

Every object (file) in Amazon S3 must reside within a bucket, which represents a collection (container) of objects. Each bucket is known by a key (name), which must be unique. For detailed information about buckets and their configuration, see Working with Amazon S3 Buckets in the Amazon Simple Storage Service User Guide.

Create a Bucket

Use the AmazonS3 client’s createBucket method. The new Bucket is returned. The createBucket method will raise an exception if the bucket already exists.

Imports

import com.amazonaws.regions.Regions;
import com.amazonaws.services.s3.AmazonS3;
import com.amazonaws.services.s3.AmazonS3ClientBuilder;
import com.amazonaws.services.s3.model.AmazonS3Exception;
import com.amazonaws.services.s3.model.Bucket;

import java.util.List;

Code

if (s3.doesBucketExistV2(bucket_name)) {
    System.out.format("Bucket %s already exists.\n", bucket_name);
    b = getBucket(bucket_name);
} else {
    try {
        b = s3.createBucket(bucket_name);
    } catch (AmazonS3Exception e) {
        System.err.println(e.getErrorMessage());
    }
}
return b;

See the complete example on GitHub.

List Buckets

Use the AmazonS3 client’s listBucket method. If successful, a list of Bucket is returned.

Imports

import com.amazonaws.regions.Regions;
import com.amazonaws.services.s3.AmazonS3;
import com.amazonaws.services.s3.AmazonS3ClientBuilder;
import com.amazonaws.services.s3.model.Bucket;

import java.util.List;

Code

List<Bucket> buckets = s3.listBuckets();
System.out.println("Your {S3} buckets are:");
for (Bucket b : buckets) {
    System.out.println("* " + b.getName());
}

See the complete example on GitHub.

Delete a Bucket

Before you can delete an Amazon S3 bucket, you must ensure that the bucket is empty or an error will result. If you have a versioned bucket, you must also delete any versioned objects associated with the bucket.

Remove Objects from an Unversioned Bucket Before Deleting It

Use the AmazonS3 client’s listObjects method to retrieve the list of objects and deleteObject to delete each one.

Imports

import com.amazonaws.AmazonServiceException;
import com.amazonaws.regions.Regions;
import com.amazonaws.services.s3.AmazonS3;
import com.amazonaws.services.s3.AmazonS3ClientBuilder;
import com.amazonaws.services.s3.model.*;

import java.util.Iterator;

Code

System.out.println(" - removing objects from bucket");
ObjectListing object_listing = s3.listObjects(bucket_name);
while (true) {
    for (Iterator<?> iterator =
         object_listing.getObjectSummaries().iterator();
         iterator.hasNext(); ) {
        S3ObjectSummary summary = (S3ObjectSummary) iterator.next();
        s3.deleteObject(bucket_name, summary.getKey());
    }

    // more object_listing to retrieve?
    if (object_listing.isTruncated()) {
        object_listing = s3.listNextBatchOfObjects(object_listing);
    } else {
        break;
    }
}

See the complete example on GitHub.

Remove Objects from a Versioned Bucket Before Deleting It

If you’re using a versioned bucket, you also need to remove any stored versions of the objects in the bucket before the bucket can be deleted.

Using a pattern similar to the one used when removing objects within a bucket, remove versioned objects by using the AmazonS3 client’s listVersions method to list any versioned objects, and then deleteVersion to delete each one.

Imports

import com.amazonaws.AmazonServiceException;
import com.amazonaws.regions.Regions;
import com.amazonaws.services.s3.AmazonS3;
import com.amazonaws.services.s3.AmazonS3ClientBuilder;
import com.amazonaws.services.s3.model.*;

import java.util.Iterator;

Code

System.out.println(" - removing versions from bucket");
VersionListing version_listing = s3.listVersions(
        new ListVersionsRequest().withBucketName(bucket_name));
while (true) {
    for (Iterator<?> iterator =
         version_listing.getVersionSummaries().iterator();
         iterator.hasNext(); ) {
        S3VersionSummary vs = (S3VersionSummary) iterator.next();
        s3.deleteVersion(
                bucket_name, vs.getKey(), vs.getVersionId());
    }

    if (version_listing.isTruncated()) {
        version_listing = s3.listNextBatchOfVersions(
                version_listing);
    } else {
        break;
    }
}

See the complete example on GitHub.

Delete an Empty Bucket

Once you remove the objects from a bucket (including any versioned objects), you can delete the bucket itself by using the AmazonS3 client’s deleteBucket method.

Imports

import com.amazonaws.AmazonServiceException;
import com.amazonaws.regions.Regions;
import com.amazonaws.services.s3.AmazonS3;
import com.amazonaws.services.s3.AmazonS3ClientBuilder;
import com.amazonaws.services.s3.model.*;

import java.util.Iterator;

Code

System.out.println(" OK, bucket ready to delete!");
s3.deleteBucket(bucket_name);

See the complete example on GitHub.