AWS CLI (command line interface) is very useful when you want to automate certain tasks. This post is about dumping a whole S3 bucket from the command line. This could be for any purpose, such as creating a backup.
First of all, if you don’t already have it installed, you’ll need to download and install the AWS CLI. More information here: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/installing.html
To configure AWS CLI, type the command:
aws configure
It will ask for credentials: the Access Key ID, and the Access Secret Key. More information on how to set up a key is here: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/managing-aws-access-keys.html
And that’s it! You now have the power of manipulating your AWS environment from your command line.
In order to dump a bucket, you’ll need to first make sure that the account belonging to the AWS Key you generated has read access to the bucket. More on setting up permissions in S3 here: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/s3-access-control.html
To dump the whole contents of an S3 bucket, you can use the following command:
aws s3 cp –quiet –recursive s3:///
This will copy the entire contents of the bucket to your local directory. As easy as that!