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Index Document Support
An index document is a webpage that is returned when a request is made to the root of
a website or any subfolder. For example, if a user enters
http://www.example.com in the browser, the server returns
http://www.example.com/index.html, where index.html is the
default webpage of the website. Thus, your customers don't have to remember the exact
URL to navigate to use for retrieving the default web page. When hosting your website on
Amazon S3, you provide this index document name as part of configuring your bucket as a
website, and an object with this name must exist in your bucket. The trailing slash at
the root-level URL is optional. For example, if you configure your website with
index.html as the index document, either of the following two URLs
return the index.html index document at the root of your website.
http://example-bucket.s3-website-region.amazonaws.com/ http://example-bucket.s3-website-region.amazonaws.com
Index Documents and Folders
Objects stored in Amazon S3 are stored within a flat container, i.e., an Amazon S3 bucket, and it does not provide any hierarchical organization, similar to a file system's. However, you can create a logical hierarchy using object key names and use these names to infer logical folders that contain these objects. For example, consider a bucket with three objects and the following key names.
sample1.jpg
photos/2006/Jan/sample2.jpg
photos/2006/Feb/sample3.jpg
All three objects are stored within a bucket, with no physical hierarchical organization. However, you can infer the following logical folder structure from the key names.
sample1.jpg object is at the root of the bucket
sample2.jpg object is in the photos/2006/Jan subfolder,
and
sample3.jpg object is in photos/2006/Feb subfolder.
The AWS Management Console also supports the concept of folders, by using the same
key naming convention used in the preceding sample. The following console screenshot
shows an ExampleBucket with a photos folder. You can
upload objects to the bucket or to the photos folder within the bucket.
If you add the object sample.jpg to the bucket, the key name is
sample.jpg. If you upload the object to the photos
folder, the object key name is photos/sample.jpg.
If your keys follow the same naming convention described above, then Amazon S3
will return the content for your index document whenever it infers that your request
is for a subfolder. You should have the index document at each level of your key’s
hierarchy. When a user specifies a URL that resembles a folder lookup, the presence
or absence of a trailing slash determines the behavior of the website endpoint. For
example, the following URL, with a trailing slash, returns the
photos/index.html index document.
http://example-bucket.s3-website-region.amazonaws.com/photos/
However, if you exclude the trailing slash from the preceding URL, Amazon S3 first
looks for an object photos in the bucket. If the photos
object is not found, then it searches for an index document,
photos/index.html. If found, Amazon S3 returns a 302 Found
message and points to the photos/ key. For subsequent requests to
photos/, Amazon S3 returns the photos/index.html
content. If the index document is also not found, Amazon S3 returns an error.
