Setup AWS SDK in Android for S3 Upload/Download

Ganesh Kalal

Ok so we already have lots of documentation and articles regarding this topic but very few are beginner friendly or contains all the steps i.e. from the creation of S3 bucket to setting up the AWS SDK in an android app. So here is an article on how to add this functionality to your app.

Setup S3 Bucket

Firstly, go to the Amazon S3 Console and click on Create bucket
Type in the bucket name. Eg: aws_upload_test
Select the region for which you want the bucket to be created and click on Create
Grant public access to the bucket if you wish to access it from anywhere and through any authenticated mode.
Now store this bucket name and region safely. If you have a backend, you could store it there using a RESTful API

Setup an Identity Pool Id

Before going to the below link, make sure you are in the right region. For eg: Asia Pacific (Mumbai) ap-south-1 for India
Go to AWS Cognito and choose Manage Identity Pools
Click Create New Identity Pool button on the top left of the console.
Give a name for the Identity pool and check Enable access to unauthenticated identities under the Unauthenticated Identities section, click Create pool button on the bottom right.
To enable Cognito Identities to access your resources, expand the View Details section to see the two roles that are to be created. Make a note of the unauth role whose name is of the form Cognito_<IdentityPoolName>Unauth_Role. Now click Allow button in the bottom right of the console.
Under Get AWSCredentials section, in the code snippet to create CognitoCachingCredentialsProvider, find the Identity pool ID and the AWS region and make note of them. You will need to add to the sample application later.

Setup Permissions

Go to Amazon IAM Console and select “Roles”.
Select the unauth role you just created in step 1, which is of the form Cognito_<IdentityPoolName>Unauth_Role.
Select Attach Policy, then find AmazonS3FullAccess and attach it it to the role.
Note: This will grant users in the identity pool full access to all buckets and operations in S3. In a real app, you should restrict users to only have access to the resources they need.

Setup AWS SDK in Android

Add Libraries

Add the following libraries in your app/build.gradle :-

AWS Libraries

Review Permissions

Make sure following permissions are present in your project’s Manifestfile :-

Permissions required for AWS Libraries

Initialize SDK

Create a single instance of AmazonS3Clientthroughout your application by adding below lines in your Application Class. You’ll need to pass the IdentityPoolId that we created above.

Upload a File

Upload a file to S3

Conclusion

Well there you go, now you know how to setup a S3 bucket, configure the AWS SDK for android and upload an image.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please post them below. I would be more than happy to receive feedback from the community.

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