PythonIntermediate

boto3

Official AWS SDK for Python — interact with S3, EC2, DynamoDB, Lambda, and 200+ AWS services.

awss3cloudlambdadynamodb

The Problem

Your app needs to store user uploads in S3, send emails via SES, trigger a Lambda function, or read from DynamoDB. The AWS Console is for humans — you need to do this from code, with proper credentials, error handling, and pagination.

Mental Model

Boto3 has two layers: resource (high-level, Pythonic objects like `s3.Bucket`) and client (low-level, 1:1 mapping to AWS API calls). Resources are friendlier for common tasks; clients give you full control. Both share the same credential chain (env vars → ~/.aws/credentials → IAM role).

60-second start

Upload a file to S3

import boto3
s3 = boto3.client('s3')
s3.upload_file(
    Filename='local_file.pdf',
    Bucket='my-bucket',
    Key='uploads/file.pdf'
)
url = s3.generate_presigned_url(
    'get_object',
    Params={'Bucket': 'my-bucket', 'Key': 'uploads/file.pdf'},
    ExpiresIn=3600
)

Use it when

Any Python code running against AWS services: uploading to S3, querying DynamoDB, invoking Lambda, sending SQS messages, managing EC2 instances.

Skip it when

Infrastructure provisioning — use CDK, Terraform, or CloudFormation instead. If you're on Google Cloud or Azure, use their respective SDKs.

Alternatives

aiobotocoreAsync wrapper around botocore for asyncio apps.

s3fsFile-system interface over S3 — use it with pandas read_csv/to_csv on s3:// paths.

AWS CDKInfrastructure as code, not runtime API calls. Different tool.

Ready to explore the full API?

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