Question

I’m working on an auto-update solution, and I’m using Amazon S3 for distribution.

I would like for this to work like follows:

1. I upload a file to s3 folder
2. An automatic PHP script detects that a new file has been added and notifies clients

To do this, I somehow need to list all files in an amazon bucket’s folder, and find the one which has been added last.

I’ve tried $s3->list_objects("mybucket");, but it returns the list of all objects inside the bucket, and I don’t see an option to list only files inside the specified folder.

What is the best way to do this using Amazon S3 PHP api?

Answer 1

To do this, I somehow need to list all files in an amazon bucket’s folder, and find the one which has been added last.

S3’s API isn’t really optimized for sort-by-modified-date, so you’d need to call list_buckets() and check each timestamp, always keeping track of the newest one until you get to the end of the list.

An automatic PHP script detects that a new file has been added and notifies clients

You’d need to write a long-running PHP CLI script that starts with:

while (true) { /*...*/ }

Maybe throw an occasional sleep(1) in there so that your CPU doesn’t spike so badly, but you essentially need to sleep-and-poll, looping over all of the timestamps each time.

I’ve tried $s3->list_objects(“mybucket”);, but it returns the list of all objects inside the bucket, and I don’t see an option to list only files inside the specified folder.

You’ll want to set the prefix parameter in your list_objects() call.