Introduction to Boto3 and AWS Credentials Setup on Windows 10

1. Introduction to Boto

Boto is a software development kit of the Python SDK for AWS. It allows you to create, update, and delete AWS resources directly from your Python scripts. Boto versions include Boto, Boto3, and Botocore.

The SDK comprises two essential Python packages: Botocore (the library providing the low-level functionality shared between the Python SDK and the AWS CLI) and Boto3 (the package implementing the Python SDK itself).

I hope that you have prior experience with AWS, have your account, and want to upskill by starting to use AWS tools and services using Python.

• Client: low-level service access
• Resource: higher-level object-oriented service access

You can use either to interact with S3.

Let us now deep-dive into step by step guide to set up Boto3.

2. Step-by-Step Guide to setup Boto3 and AWS credentials on your Windows 10:

• To begin with, you need Python in your system.
• Go to python.org and download the version of Python required.
• Set paths for Python and pip3.

Once Python is installed, you will need Boto3.

• Go to the command prompt and type “pip3 install boto3“.
• Now you need to install the AWS command-line interface.
• Go to the command prompt and type “pip3 install awscli“.
• To check if you have aws CLI installed, type “aws –version“

Next, you need the AWS access key.

• Go to AWS Console. Click on the top right corner to use your profile and “My security credentials.”
  
• Next, click on the Access keys.
  
• Click on create a new access key.
  
• Click on the download key file
  
• Now you have the access key id and secret key downloaded. The next step is to configure AWS credentials
• Go to the command prompt, and type “aws configure.” It will ask for the access key id and secret key
• Once entered, it will ask for the default region (if you don’t mention the default region of your choice, it will take us-east-1 as the default region)
• Next, you must mention the default output format (ex: json)
• To check if credentials are configured or not, go to This PC
• Go to your operating system’s location (usually: local drive c). Then, go to users and click on current users
• Now you need to open “.aws” under which you will have a credentials folder where you can see your aws credentials
• If you want to check for the credentials through the command line, follow:>> cd .aws>> dir>>type credentials
• This creates a default profile

To create a profile of your choice, you can add a new user and create one

• To add a new user with a different profile, create a new IAM user in the aws console.
• If you try to configure the new IAM user credentials using the command line, it will overwrite the root user credentials
• So to configure the new IAM user, type “aws configure –profile new_user-name“
• You will again be asked for the access key id and secret key. Again, copy pastes them from AWS Console
• Next, enter the default region and default output type
• Now, check for credentials through the command line.>>dir>type credentials
• You can see both the credentials
• You can also check for credentials in your system where your operating system is installed (usually: local c drive)
• You have your boto3 set up done. Now you can use AWS services with Python

3. Conclusion

At its core, all that Boto3 does is call AWS APIs on your behalf. For the majority of the AWS services, Boto3 offers two distinct ways of accessing these abstracted APIs:

Boto3 is the latest version of the SDK and supports Python versions 2.6.5, 2.7, and 3.3. In addition, it includes some service-specific features to facilitate development. It is an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Software Development Kit (SDK) for Python that allows Python developers to create software that uses Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2.

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If you have any queries about AWS services, Boto3 SDK, or Python programming language, feel free to drop in a comment and we will get back to you quickly.