Question

I am new to Python coding and havent been able to progress on this. I have some time encoded filenames in the following format:

20121208151318.gzip
20121208151320.gzip
20121208151322.gzip
20121208151325.gzip
20121208151326.gzip

Using this code I can print the filenames of all the files in my S3 bucket:

import boto
s3conn = boto.connect_s3()
bucket = s3conn.lookup('my_bucket_name')
for key in bucket:
  print k.name

key.getfile()

I need help with two aspects. Firstly how can I get the name of the most recent file in the bucket, which would in my case be:

20121208151326 (15:13:26 - 8th December 2012)

Secondly, how can I then download this file? I found the key.getfile() command but I cant work how to implement it.

Answer 1

Based on your format latest = max(keys) should get the latest item

To download the content of of the file your can use

latest.get_contents_to_filename(<file_name>)

or

latest.get_contents_to_file(<file>)

See more details in boto documentations for S3