Access to S3

This notebook provides a comprehensive tutorial on using the boto3 library in Python to access and download data from S3-compatible object storage.

Steps covered:

1. Installation & Imports: Setting up boto3 and configuring it for UNSIGNED access, which allows you to retrieve public data without needing AWS credentials.
2. Resource vs. Client: Demonstrating the two ways to interact with S3:
   • Resource: A higher-level, object-oriented interface (e.g., using s3r.Bucket).
   • Client: A lower-level interface that maps closely to the actual service API (e.g., using s3c.list_objects).
3. Data Exploration: How to list buckets, iterate through objects, and inspect metadata like file sizes and keys.
4. File Operations: Practical examples of downloading files (like README.txt and 3u2023.json) directly to the local environment and reading their contents.

The examples specifically use the GFZ Potsdam S3 endpoint to explore DAS datasets.