How to delete files recursively from an S3 bucket

Question

I have the following folder structure in S3. Is there a way to recursively remove all files under a certain folder (say foo/bar1 or foo or foo/bar2/1 ..)

Answer 1

Best way is to use lifecycle rule to delete whole bucket contents. Programmatically you can use following code (PHP) to PUT lifecycle rule.

$expiration = array('Date' => date('U', strtotime('GMT midnight')));
$result = $s3->putBucketLifecycle(array(
            'Bucket' => 'bucket-name',
            'Rules' => array(
                array(
                    'Expiration' => $expiration,
                    'ID' => 'rule-name',
                    'Prefix' => '',
                    'Status' => 'Enabled',
                ),
            ),
        ));

In above case all the objects will be deleted starting Date - "Today GMT midnight".

You can also specify Days as follows. But with Days it will wait for at least 24 hrs (1 day is minimum) to start deleting the bucket contents.

$expiration = array('Days' => 1);