Amazon S3 delete subfolder and it's contents C#

Question

Suppose I have the following hierarchy in an S3 bucket.

Bucket
   DeptFolder
        Folder1
           Folder2
              -file1
              -file2
              -file3

I want to delete Folder2 and any files underneath it so it ends up looking like this...

Bucket
   DeptFolder
        Folder1

I run the following code and the delete is occurring at Folder1 not Folder2.

using (var s3Client = new AmazonS3Client(myAccessKey,mySecretAccessKey, config))
                {

                        S3DirectoryInfo directoryToDelete = new S3DirectoryInfo(s3Client, myBucket, "DeptFolder/Folder1/Folder2");
                        directoryToDelete.Delete(true); 

                }

What I end up with is this...

Bucket
    DeptFolder

Can anyone tell me where I might be going wrong? Thanks!

Answer 1

Amazon S3 is an object storage system, not a file system.

Folders do not actually exist!

For example, you can create an object called DeptFolder/Folder1/Folder2/foo and the object will be created in that path, even if the folders do not exist ! It will appear that the folders are there, but they are merely created as a convenience.

If the object was then deleted, the folders would disappear too because they don't actually exist.

I think this is what is happening to you... There are no objects in Folder1 , so when Folder1/Folder2 is deleted, Folder1 also disappears because there is nothing in it to make it "appear".

Bottom line: Don't think of S3 as a normal file system. Don't get worried about what directories/folders exist. Just store files where you want and it will work fine. Empty folders (generally) don't exist. Don't panic!

Some people do panic, so they create empty (zero-length) files named the same as the folders, which forces the folder to appear. You can do that, but it's best to just accept the way that S3 works.