How to get a specific version of a file from S3 using AWS CLI?

In this post we are going to see how to enable version on a bucket and then how to get a very specific version of a file or object from S3 using AWS CLI.

Enable versioning

Versioning can be enabled on a bucket during creation or after creation. If your bucket is already created, go to properties and make sure versioning is enabled.

Get specific version from S3

We first upload a file named version-test with the following text – “Hello, this is VERSION 1”

[osboxes@wk1 ~]$ aws s3 cp version-test s3://hirw-bucket-versions

upload: ./version-test to s3://hirw-bucket-versions/version-test

Let’s now execute s3api list-object-versions with the name of the bucket. Here we can see the key of the object which is the name of the file/object and the version id. This is version 1 of the object.

[osboxes@wk1 ~]$ aws s3api list-object-versions --bucket hirw-bucket-versions

{
    "Versions": [
        {
            "ETag": "\"43e9d964d061d355ea04efcd5fee0b5d\"",
            "Size": 25,
            "StorageClass": "STANDARD",
            "Key": "version-test",
            "VersionId": "w6l8ijFxRK5JtEiwfcjeYYn5IGe8oTKp",
            "IsLatest": true,
            "LastModified": "2020-11-18T19:39:49+00:00",
            "Owner": {
                "DisplayName": "xxx",
                "ID": "90e716b806d3a58e2950b72c380166e57a0388d557bdc5365dd305838342930d"
            }
        }
    ]
}

We now change the content of the file version-test to – “Hello, this is VERSION TWO”

When we now list-object-versions we will see 2 versions for the objects. You can see which version is latest by looking at the IsLatest property.

[osboxes@wk1 ~]$ aws s3api list-object-versions --bucket hirw-bucket-versions

{
    "Versions": [
        {
            "ETag": "\"04cf95a672923b5c021568765b336c4f\"",
            "Size": 27,
            "StorageClass": "STANDARD",
            "Key": "version-test",
            "VersionId": "8LKeiP26.7WS_CUYUmY_BNmpIX0ljIxa",
            "IsLatest": true,
            "LastModified": "2020-11-18T19:40:35+00:00",
            "Owner": {
                "DisplayName": "xxx",
                "ID": "90e716b806d3a58e2950b72c380166e57a0388d557bdc5365dd305838342930d"
            }
        },

        {
            "ETag": "\"43e9d964d061d355ea04efcd5fee0b5d\"",
            "Size": 25,
            "StorageClass": "STANDARD",
            "Key": "version-test",
            "VersionId": "w6l8ijFxRK5JtEiwfcjeYYn5IGe8oTKp",
            "IsLatest": false,
            "LastModified": "2020-11-18T19:39:49+00:00",
            "Owner": {
                "DisplayName": "xxx",
                "ID": "90e716b806d3a58e2950b72c380166e57a0388d557bdc5365dd305838342930d"
            }
        }
    ]
}

When we get the object from S3, by default, S3 will return the most recent version.

[osboxes@wk1 ~]$ aws s3api get-object --bucket hirw-bucket-versions --key version-test --range bytes=0-10000 /dev/stdout | head

Hello, this is VERSION TWO

{
    "AcceptRanges": "bytes",
    "LastModified": "2020-11-18T19:40:35+00:00",
    "ContentLength": 27,
    "ETag": "\"04cf95a672923b5c021568765b336c4f\"",
    "VersionId": "8LKeiP26.7WS_CUYUmY_BNmpIX0ljIxa",
    "ContentRange": "bytes 0-26/27",
    "ContentType": "binary/octet-stream",
    "Metadata": {}

To get an older version we need to specify the  version id of the version we are trying to get. So to get the first version we need to specify –version-id “w6l8ijFxRK5JtEiwfcjeYYn5IGe8oTKp” 

[osboxes@wk1 ~]$ aws s3api get-object --bucket hirw-bucket-versions --key version-test --version-id "w6l8ijFxRK5JtEiwfcjeYYn5IGe8oTKp" /dev/stdout | head

Hello, this is VERSION 1

{
    "AcceptRanges": "bytes",
    "LastModified": "2020-11-18T19:39:49+00:00",
    "ContentLength": 25,
    "ETag": "\"43e9d964d061d355ea04efcd5fee0b5d\"",
    "VersionId": "w6l8ijFxRK5JtEiwfcjeYYn5IGe8oTKp",
    "ContentType": "binary/octet-stream",
    "Metadata": {}
}