The prefect-aws library makes it easy to leverage the capabilities of AWS in your workflows. For example, you can retrieve secrets using AWS Secrets Manager, read and write objects with AWS S3, and deploy your flows on AWS ECS.

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Getting started

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Prerequisites

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Install prefect-aws

Install or update to the latest version of the prefect-aws library and dependencies. 
pip install -U prefect-aws

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Register newly installed block types

Register the block types in the prefect-aws module to make them available for use. 
prefect block register -m prefect_aws

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Examples

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Run flows on AWS ECS

Run flows on AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS) to dynamically scale your infrastructure. See the ECS work pool docs for a walkthrough of using ECS in a hybrid work pool. If you’re using Prefect Cloud, ECS push work pools provide all the benefits of ECS with a quick setup and no worker needed. In the examples below, you create blocks with Python code. Alternatively, each block can be created through the Prefect UI.

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Save credentials to an AWS Credentials block

Use of most AWS services requires an authenticated session. Prefect makes it simple to provide credentials via a AWS Credentials block. Steps:
  1. Refer to the AWS Configuration documentation to retrieve your access key ID and secret access key.
  2. Copy the access key ID and secret access key.
  3. Create an AWSCredenitals block in the Prefect UI or use a Python script like the one below.
from prefect_aws import AwsCredentials


AwsCredentials(
    aws_access_key_id="PLACEHOLDER",
    aws_secret_access_key="PLACEHOLDER",
    aws_session_token=None,  # replace this with token if necessary
    region_name="us-east-2"
).save("BLOCK-NAME-PLACEHOLDER")
Prefect is using the Boto3 library under the hood. To find credentials for authentication, any data not provided to the block are sourced at runtime in the order shown in the Boto3 docs. Prefect creates the session object using the values in the block and then, any missing values follow the sequence in the Boto3 docs. See an example of using the AwsCredentials block with AWS Secrets Manager with third-party services without storing credentials in the block itself in the docs. Here’s how to load the saved credentials: 
from prefect_aws import AwsCredentials


AwsCredentials.load("BLOCK-NAME-PLACEHOLDER")
The AWS Credentials block is often nested within other blocks, such as S3Bucket or AwsSecret, and provides authentication for those services.

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Read and write files to AWS S3

Upload a file to an AWS S3 bucket and download the same file under a different file name. The following code assumes that the bucket already exists: 
from pathlib import Path
from prefect import flow
from prefect_aws import AwsCredentials, S3Bucket


@flow
def s3_flow():
    # create a dummy file to upload
    file_path = Path("test-example.txt")
    file_path.write_text("Hello, Prefect!")

    aws_credentials = AwsCredentials.load("BLOCK-NAME-PLACEHOLDER")
    s3_bucket = S3Bucket(
        bucket_name="BUCKET-NAME-PLACEHOLDER",
        credentials=aws_credentials
    )

    s3_bucket_path = s3_bucket.upload_from_path(file_path)
    downloaded_file_path = s3_bucket.download_object_to_path(
        s3_bucket_path, "downloaded-test-example.txt"
    )
    return downloaded_file_path.read_text()


if __name__ == "__main__":
    s3_flow()

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Access secrets with AWS Secrets Manager

Write a secret to AWS Secrets Manager, read the secret data, delete the secret, and return the secret data. 
from prefect import flow
from prefect_aws import AwsCredentials, AwsSecret


@flow
def secrets_manager_flow():
    aws_credentials = AwsCredentials.load("BLOCK-NAME-PLACEHOLDER")
    aws_secret = AwsSecret(secret_name="test-example", aws_credentials=aws_credentials)
    aws_secret.write_secret(secret_data=b"Hello, Prefect!")
    secret_data = aws_secret.read_secret()
    aws_secret.delete_secret()
    return secret_data


if __name__ == "__main__":
    secrets_manager_flow()

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Resources

For assistance using AWS, consult the AWS documentation and, in particular, the Boto3 documentation. Refer to the prefect-aws API documentation linked in the sidebar to explore all the capabilities of the prefect-aws library.