Key names for Lightsail object storage buckets

Files that you upload to your bucket are stored as objects in the Amazon Lightsail object storage service. An object key (or key name) uniquely identifies an object stored in a bucket. This guide explains the concept of key names and key name prefixes that make up the folder structure of buckets viewed through the Lightsail console. For more information about buckets, see Object storage.

Key names

The Lightsail object storage service data model uses a flat structure instead of a hierarchical structure like you would see in a file system. There is no hierarchy of folders and subfolders. However, you can infer logical hierarchy using key name prefixes and delimiters. The Lightsail console uses the key name prefixes to display your objects in a folder structure.

Suppose that your bucket has four objects with the following object keys:

The Lightsail console uses the key name prefixes (Development/, Finance/, and Private/) and the delimiter (/) to present a folder structure. The to-dos.doc key name does not have a prefix, so its object appears directly at the root level of your bucket. If you browse to the Development/ folder in the Lightsail console, you see the Projects.xls object. In the Finance/ folder, you see the statement1.pdf object, and in the Private/ folder, you see the taxdocument.pdf object.

The Lightsail console allows for folder creation by creating a zero-byte object with the key name prefix and delimiter value as the key name. These folder objects don't appear in the console. However, they behave like any other objects. You can view and manipulate them using the Amazon S3 API, AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), or AWS SDKs.

Object key naming guidelines

You can use any UTF-8 character in an object key name. However, using certain characters in key names can cause problems with some applications and protocols. The following guidelines help you maximize compliance with DNS, web-safe characters, XML parsers, and other APIs.

Safe characters

The following character sets are generally safe for use in key names.

The following are examples of valid object key names:

Characters that might require special handling

The following characters in a key name might require additional code handling and likely need to be URL encoded or referenced as HEX. Some of these are non-printable characters that your browser might not handle, which also requires special handling:

Characters to avoid

Avoid the following characters in a key name because of significant special handling for consistency across all applications.

XML related object key constraints

As specified by the XML standard on end-of-line handling, all XML text is normalized so that single carriage returns (ASCII code 13) and carriage returns immediately followed by a line feed (ASCII code 10) are replaced by a single line feed character. To ensure the correct parsing of object keys in XML requests, carriage returns and other special characters must be replaced with their equivalent XML entity code when they are inserted within XML tags. The following is a list of such special characters and their equivalent entity codes:

The following example illustrates the use of an XML entity code as a substitution for a carriage return. This DeleteObjects request deletes an object with the key parameter /some/prefix/objectwith\rcarriagereturn (where the \r is the carriage return).

<Delete xmlns="http://s3.amazonaws.com/doc/2006-03-01/">
      <Object>
        <Key>/some/prefix/objectwith&#13;carriagereturn</Key>
      </Object>
    </Delete>