🔧 Managing Files on AWS S3 with Ruby Shouldn’t Be a Hassle — So I Built S3FileManager

May 13, 2025

As developers, we tend to take small file operations for granted—until they start piling up. Let me paint a picture:

You upload a file to an S3 bucket. Then your PM asks: “Can we rename it?” Then a bug pops up because two versions of the file are floating around. Then you forget if you already deleted the old one… 💣 And suddenly, your storage is messy, your logs are full of copy-paste errors, and you’re questioning life choices.

So I took a break, made a fresh mate 🧉, and said: “There has to be a cleaner way.”

🚀 Enter S3FileManager

I built a simple Ruby class to make working with AWS S3 a breeze. With just a few lines of code, I can:

• Upload a file
• Delete a file
• Rename a file (via copy + delete)
• Overwrite a file (aka “edit”)

All abstracted in a single, readable, reusable class.

Here’s the core:

class S3FileManager
  def initialize(bucket_name:, region: 'us-east-1')
    @s3 = Aws::S3::Resource.new(region: region)
    @bucket = @s3.bucket(bucket_name)
  end

  def upload(local_path, remote_key)
    @bucket.object(remote_key).upload_file(local_path)
  end

  def delete(remote_key)
    @bucket.object(remote_key).delete
  end

  def rename(old_key, new_key)
    @bucket.object(new_key).copy_from(@bucket.object(old_key))
    @bucket.object(old_key).delete
  end

  def overwrite(remote_key, new_local_path)
    upload(new_local_path, remote_key)
  end
end

🧪 Example usage:

manager = S3FileManager.new(bucket_name: 'my-awesome-bucket')

manager.upload('local/image.png', 'images/profile.png')
manager.rename('images/profile.png', 'images/profile_old.png')
manager.overwrite('images/profile_old.png', 'local/new_image.png')
manager.delete('images/profile_old.png')

💡 Why This Matters

✅ Clean Abstraction: You don’t need to write repetitive S3 logic across your app. ✅ Less Error-Prone: No more forgetting to delete old files or mismatching paths. ✅ More Expressive: Your code says exactly what it does: rename, delete, upload.

Plus, it’s a joy to work with something that feels Ruby-ish — expressive, elegant, and easy to test.

🧠 Lessons Learned

• Rename in S3 isn’t real — it’s actually a copy followed by a delete.
• Think ahead when dealing with object keys and folders — especially if you’re dealing with user-uploaded files.
• Design for reuse — what started as a helper method became a class I now drop into multiple projects.

👋 Want to Collaborate?

If you’ve tackled similar file-handling pain points — or want to improve this class (add logging? versioning? signed URLs?) — I’d love to hear from you.

Drop a comment, message me, or fork the gist if you’d like to play with the code.

Let’s keep Ruby expressive and fun. 💎✨

#Ruby #AWS #S3 #SoftwareEngineering #CleanCode #Automation #Rails #RubyOnRails #DevLife #CodingTips