Introducing Python Boto3

Python Boto3 is the AWS SDK for Python. It is useful for end users to manage their AWS services—for example, IAM or Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Its features are as follows:

• Feature-rich object-oriented API
• Provides low-level access to various AWS services

Installing Python Boto3

Boto3 is written in Python. We can use the pip package installer for Python. This comes pre-installed with the OS in many OSes but is straightforward to install manually, with the following command:

sudo apt-get install python3-pip

Once we have pip installed in the system, the installation of AWS Boto3 is simple in Linux by running the following command:

pip3 install boto3

Before we begin using Boto3, we need to set up the authentication credentials, which Boto3 will use to connect to AWS. We already have these credentials configured as part of the AWS CLI setup, via the aws configure command.

Verifying the Boto3 setup

To verify the setup, please follow these steps:

1. First get the Python command, to get the python shell run the following command:

   python3
   Python 3.6.9 (default, Oct  8 2020, 12:12:24)
   [GCC 8.4.0] on linux
   Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

2. To use Boto3, we first need to import it, as follows:

   import boto3

3. We need to tell Boto3 which service to use (for example: S3 in this case), as follows:

   s3 = boto3.resource("s3")

4. Print all the bucket names, like this:

   for bucket in s3.buckets.all():
   ...     print(bucket.name)
   ... 
   my-test-s3-bucket-XXXXXX

Here, I have given you a brief introduction to Boto3. Boto3 is powerful, and in a future chapter, we will see how it will be helpful in automating recurring tasks.