We have ZIP files that are 5-10GB in size. The typical ZIP file has 5-10 internal files, each 1-5 GB in size uncompressed.

I have a nice set of Python tools for reading these files. Basically, I can open a filename and if there is a ZIP file, the tools search in the ZIP file and then open the compressed file. It's all rather transparent.

I want to store these files in Amazon S3 as compressed files. I can fetch ranges of S3 files, so it should be possible to fetch the ZIP central directory (it's the end of the file, so I can just read the last 64KiB), find the component I want, download that, and stream directly to the calling process.

So my question is, how do I do that through the standard Python ZipFile API? It isn't documented how to replace the filesystem transport with an arbitrary object that supports POSIX semantics. Is this possible without rewriting the module?

So here is the code that allows you to open a file on Amazon S3 as if it were a normal file. Notice I use the aws command, rather than the boto3 Python module. (I don't have access to boto3.) You can open the file and seek on it. The file is cached locally. If you open the file with the Python ZipFile API and it's a ZipFile, you can then read individual parts. You can't write, though, because S3 doesn't support partial writes.

Separately, I implement s3open(), which can open a file for reading or writing, but it doesn't implement the seek interface, which is required by ZipFile.

from urllib.parse import urlparse
from subprocess import run,Popen,PIPE
import copy
import json
import os
import tempfile

# Tools for reading and write files from Amazon S3 without boto or boto3
# http://boto.cloudhackers.com/en/latest/s3_tut.html
# but it is easier to use the aws cli, since it's configured to work.

def s3open(path, mode="r", encoding=None):
    """
    Open an s3 file for reading or writing. Can handle any size, but cannot seek.
    We could use boto.
    http://boto.cloudhackers.com/en/latest/s3_tut.html
    but it is easier to use the aws cli, since it is present and more likely to work.
    """
    from subprocess import run,PIPE,Popen
    if "b" in mode:
        assert encoding == None
    else:
        if encoding==None:
            encoding="utf-8"
    assert 'a' not in mode
    assert '+' not in mode

    if "r" in mode:
        p = Popen(['aws','s3','cp',path,'-'],stdout=PIPE,encoding=encoding)
        return p.stdout

    elif "w" in mode:
        p = Popen(['aws','s3','cp','-',path],stdin=PIPE,encoding=encoding)
        return p.stdin
    else:
        raise RuntimeError("invalid mode:{}".format(mode))




CACHE_SIZE=4096                 # big enough for front and back caches
MAX_READ=65536*16
debug=False
class S3File:
    """Open an S3 file that can be seeked. This is done by caching to the local file system."""
    def __init__(self,name,mode='rb'):
        self.name   = name
        self.url    = urlparse(name)
        if self.url.scheme != 's3':
            raise RuntimeError("url scheme is {}; expecting s3".format(self.url.scheme))
        self.bucket = self.url.netloc
        self.key    = self.url.path[1:]
        self.fpos   = 0
        self.tf     = tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile()
        cmd = ['aws','s3api','list-objects','--bucket',self.bucket,'--prefix',self.key,'--output','json']
        data = json.loads(Popen(cmd,encoding='utf8',stdout=PIPE).communicate()[0])
        file_info = data['Contents'][0]
        self.length = file_info['Size']
        self.ETag   = file_info['ETag']

        # Load the caches

        self.frontcache = self._readrange(0,CACHE_SIZE) # read the first 1024 bytes and get length of the file
        if self.length > CACHE_SIZE:
            self.backcache_start = self.length-CACHE_SIZE
            if debug: print("backcache starts at {}".format(self.backcache_start))
            self.backcache  = self._readrange(self.backcache_start,CACHE_SIZE)
        else:
            self.backcache  = None

    def _readrange(self,start,length):
        # This is gross; we copy everything to the named temporary file, rather than a pipe
        # because the pipes weren't showing up in /dev/fd/?
        # We probably want to cache also... That's coming
        cmd = ['aws','s3api','get-object','--bucket',self.bucket,'--key',self.key,'--output','json',
               '--range','bytes={}-{}'.format(start,start+length-1),self.tf.name]
        if debug:print(cmd)
        data = json.loads(Popen(cmd,encoding='utf8',stdout=PIPE).communicate()[0])
        if debug:print(data)
        self.tf.seek(0)         # go to the beginning of the data just read
        return self.tf.read(length) # and read that much

    def __repr__(self):
        return "FakeFile<name:{} url:{}>".format(self.name,self.url)

    def read(self,length=-1):
        # If length==-1, figure out the max we can read to the end of the file
        if length==-1:
            length = min(MAX_READ, self.length - self.fpos + 1)

        if debug:
            print("read: fpos={}  length={}".format(self.fpos,length))
        # Can we satisfy from the front cache?
        if self.fpos < CACHE_SIZE and self.fpos+length < CACHE_SIZE:
            if debug:print("front cache")
            buf = self.frontcache[self.fpos:self.fpos+length]
            self.fpos += len(buf)
            if debug:print("return 1: buf=",buf)
            return buf

        # Can we satisfy from the back cache?
        if self.backcache and (self.length - CACHE_SIZE < self.fpos):
            if debug:print("back cache")
            buf = self.backcache[self.fpos - self.backcache_start:self.fpos - self.backcache_start + length]
            self.fpos += len(buf)
            if debug:print("return 2: buf=",buf)
            return buf

        buf = self._readrange(self.fpos, length)
        self.fpos += len(buf)
        if debug:print("return 3: buf=",buf)
        return buf

    def seek(self,offset,whence=0):
        if debug:print("seek({},{})".format(offset,whence))
        if whence==0:
            self.fpos = offset
        elif whence==1:
            self.fpos += offset
        elif whence==2:
            self.fpos = self.length + offset
        else:
            raise RuntimeError("whence={}".format(whence))
        if debug:print("   ={}  (self.length={})".format(self.fpos,self.length))

    def tell(self):
        return self.fpos

    def write(self):
        raise RuntimeError("Write not supported")

    def flush(self):
        raise RuntimeError("Flush not supported")

    def close(self):
        return