So you’ve decided, like me, that you want to do all the awesome things with the AWS SDK. Or you, also like me, tried to read the Signature v4 documentation and died a little inside. Ok in my case mostly that. Well good news, there’s a Java SDK that makes it all so easy. Well. Easier.

Getting started - get the dependencies

Before even thinking about calling the SDK methods you’re going to need to have it somewhere. Download links can can be found here : AWS SDK for Java. All you really need is the zip file (direct link) but they kindly, as with many of their thingys, make all the source code available on Github.

If you open up that zip file you’ll find a folder called aws-java-sdk-x.x.x, and if you dig further down a folder lib. Within there are the jar files that you’ll need. At time of writing the precise file you’re looking for here really is aws-java-sdk-1.9.34/lib/aws-java-sdk-1.9.34.jar. Take this file and put it somewhere safe.

I decided to just put all the jar files here into C:\Users{my-user}.CommandBox\lib (because I’m using command box and am lazy). I also put in all the jar files from aws-java-sdk-1.9.34/third-party/*.jar. This may bite me in the arse later, but at least I can get on with playing with my poorly secured IAM user.

Making a poorly secured IAM user

Yep you’re going to need an IAM user. Depending on whether you’re being really lazy (and want to piss off the poor person dealing with security for your company) then you can just make a grant all user.

This is not really advisable. So just go and get an IAM user made up with access to whatever it is you want to do - for this example I’ll be creating some stuff in S3 so that’s the access needed. Make a note of the AWS access key ID and the AWS secret access key - you will be needing both of these.

Reading the documentation

I’ll keep this nice and short here. If you need a hand on deciphering or finding the documentation then have a read of my earlier post, Coldfusion Users Guide To Reading Java Api Docs

Example code

So without further ado here’s the example code (ok totally taken from my earlier post) for accessing an S3 object.

credentials = CreateObject(
	'java',
	'com.amazonaws.auth.BasicAWSCredentials'
).init(
	'YourAWSAccessKeyID',
	'YourAWSSecretAccessKey'
);

s3 = CreateObject(
	'java',
	'com.amazonaws.services.s3.AmazonS3Client'
).init(
	credentials
);

buckets = s3.listBuckets();

buckets_iterator = buckets.listIterator();

while ( buckets_iterator.hasNext() ) {

	bucket = buckets_iterator.next();
	writedump( bucket.getName() );

}

Additional reading

So it turns out that Ben Nadel has already written on this subject. His article “Using The Amazon Web Services (AWS) SDK To Create Pre-Signed S3 URLs With Path-Style Access” covers pretty much the same subject but with a different end product. But mine comes with the hobo egg as a mascot, woo!