How to store and retrieve gzip-compressed objects in AWS S3

s3gzip.py

# vim: set fileencoding=utf-8 :
#
# How to store and retrieve gzip-compressed objects in AWS S3
###########################################################################
#
#   Copyright 2015 Vince Veselosky and contributors
#
#   Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
#   you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
#   You may obtain a copy of the License at
#
#       http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
#
#   Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
#   distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
#   WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
#   See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
#   limitations under the License.
#
from __future__ import absolute_import, print_function, unicode_literals
from io import BytesIO
from gzip import GzipFile

import boto3
s3 = boto3.client('s3')
bucket = 'bluebucket.mindvessel.net'

# Read in some example text, as unicode
with open("utext.txt") as fi:
    text_body = fi.read().decode("utf-8")

# A GzipFile must wrap a real file or a file-like object. We do not want to
# write to disk, so we use a BytesIO as a buffer.
gz_body = BytesIO()
gz = GzipFile(None, 'wb', 9, gz_body)
gz.write(text_body.encode('utf-8'))  # convert unicode strings to bytes!
gz.close()
# GzipFile has written the compressed bytes into our gz_body
s3.put_object(
    Bucket=bucket,
    Key='gztest.txt',  # Note: NO .gz extension!
    ContentType='text/plain',  # the original type
    ContentEncoding='gzip',  # MUST have or browsers will error
    Body=gz_body.getvalue()
)
retr = s3.get_object(Bucket=bucket, Key='gztest.txt')
# Now the fun part. Reading it back requires this little dance, because
# GzipFile insists that its underlying file-like thing implement tell and
# seek, but boto3's io stream does not.
bytestream = BytesIO(retr['Body'].read())
got_text = GzipFile(None, 'rb', fileobj=bytestream).read().decode('utf-8')
assert got_text == text_body

Browsers will honor the content-encoding header and decompress the content automatically. This is roughly the same as running mod_gzip in your Apache or Nginx server, except this data is always compressed, whereas mod_gzip only compresses the response of the client advertises it accepts compression. In practice, all real browsers accept it. Most programming language HTTP libraries also handle it transparently (but not boto3, as demonstrated above).

It is worth noting that curl does not detect compression unless you have specifically asked it to. I strongly recommend adding --compressed to your .curlrc, because when would you not want this?

thank you, I found this helpful!

very useful piece of code, thanks!

you saved my day, thanks!

Good stuff, saved me in the world of Lambda :) thanks.

Very helpful. Thank you!

Hi Vince, Can you please comment on this Stackoverflow Question

Great code, I was looking for this online!

Thanks a lot for this! Looked all over for this!! Finally got it to work!

Saved my day. Thanks!

I've been trying to read, and avoid downloading, CloudTrail logs from S3 and had nearly given up on the get()['Body'].read() class until you explained reading back the 'little dance'. THANK YOU.

This is a good fix, but I don't think it works for multi-file archives

Thanks!

Great code man, thnx!