Learn how to automatically create timestamped S3 buckets using AWS Lambda and get instant email alerts via Amazon SNS to your Gmail. Step-by-step guide for automation on AWS.

Introduction

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is a powerful cloud storage solution provided by AWS that allows users to store and retrieve any amount of data at any time. In many real-world scenarios, organizations require automation to manage data more effectively. One such use case is the automated creation of new S3 buckets with timestamps whenever a new object is uploaded to an existing bucket. This approach not only helps in organizing data chronologically but also enables better tracking and archiving of uploads.

To further enhance this automation, integrating email notifications ensures that users or administrators are immediately alerted when an upload occurs. This is accomplished by leveraging AWS services such as S3 Event Notifications, Lambda Functions, SNS (Simple Notification Service), and CloudWatch. The Lambda function responds to upload events in the source bucket, dynamically creates a new bucket with a timestamped name, and triggers an SNS topic to send an email alert.

What is Simple Storage Service (S3)?

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is a scalable, high-speed, web-based cloud storage service designed to store and retrieve any amount of data at any time. Launched by Amazon Web Services (AWS), S3 is widely used for a variety of purposes, including backup and restore, content distribution, disaster recovery, and data archiving.

What is Simple Notification Service(SNS)?

Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) is a fully managed messaging service provided by AWS that allows you to send notifications to a large number of recipients or systems. It provides a highly scalable, reliable, and cost-effective solution for sending messages, alerts, and notifications to end-users or other applications. SNS enables the creation and management of topics, to which subscribers can subscribe to receive messages.

What is Lambda ?

AWS Lambda is a fully managed serverless computing service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that lets you run your code in response to events without provisioning or managing servers. With Lambda, you can write code to process events such as file uploads, database changes, or HTTP requests, and AWS automatically manages the infrastructure required to run that code.

Prerequisites

To get started with this project , you need the following:

• AWS Account
• Gmail Account

Step 1 : Go to S3 and create a S3 Bucket

1. Select General Purpose as Bucket-type.
2. Provide a name for the S3 bucket.

1. Untick the Block all public access, and also enable bucket-versioning .

2. Enable Bucket-key and Click create bucket . Then a bucket will be created under the name you have provided .

Step 2 : Provide the bucket policy of the S3 bucket

1. Once the S3 bucket is created , Go to Permissions to provide the S3 bucket policy .

1. Under Permissions you will find bucket-policy , click on Edit to provide the bucket policy. The policy must be written using JSON.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [    {
      "Sid": "PublicReadGetObject",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": "*",
      "Action": "s3:GetObject",
      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::bucket-genie/*"
    }
  ]
}

1. Then after the policy is given inside the bucket policy , click on save changes to update the changes in the S3 bucket.

Step 3 : Go to Lambda and create a Lambda function

1. Click on “create a function” , Select an option called “author from Scratch”.
2. Provide a name for your function.

1. Select python 3.13 as lambda runtime , and x86_64 as the Architecture.

1. After selecting the runtime and architecture , click on create function a lambda function will be created.

2. Once the function is created you can see a image like this with the function name on the top.

1. Under code section provide the Python code which is the main key for the project .

import boto3
from datetime import datetime
import urllib.parse
s3 = boto3.client('s3', region_name='ap-south-1')
sns = boto3.client('sns', region_name='ap-south-1')
# Fixed bucket name with timestamp - generated only once
BUCKET_NAME = 'bucket-genie-backup-20250509'
REGION = 'ap-south-1'
SNS_TOPIC_ARN = 'arn:aws:sns:ap-south-1:530424100396:S3'
def bucket_exists(bucket_name):
    try:
        s3.head_bucket(Bucket=bucket_name)
        return True
    except s3.exceptions.ClientError:
        return False
def create_bucket(bucket_name):
    s3.create_bucket(
        Bucket=bucket_name,
        CreateBucketConfiguration={'LocationConstraint': REGION}
    )
    print(f" Created bucket: {bucket_name}")
def copy_to_bucket(source_bucket, object_key, destination_bucket):
    copy_source = {'Bucket': source_bucket, 'Key': object_key}
    s3.copy_object(
        Bucket=destination_bucket,
        CopySource=copy_source,
        Key=object_key
    )
    print(f" Copied {object_key} from {source_bucket} to {destination_bucket}")
def send_sns_notification(bucket_name, created_time):
    message = f"""Hello user,
This is to inform you that a new S3 bucket has been created for backup purposes.
🔹 Bucket Name: {bucket_name}
🔹 Region: {REGION}
🔹 Created At (UTC): {created_time}
All future uploads will be backed up to this bucket.
Thank You,
AWS Lambda Backup System
"""
    sns.publish(
        TopicArn=SNS_TOPIC_ARN,
        Subject=' S3 Backup Bucket Created',
        Message=message
    )
    print("📧 Email notification sent via SNS.")
def lambda_handler(event, context):
    source_bucket = event['Records'][0]['s3']['bucket']['name']
    object_key = urllib.parse.unquote_plus(event['Records'][0]['s3']['object']['key'])
    try:
        is_new = False
        if not bucket_exists(BUCKET_NAME):
            create_bucket(BUCKET_NAME)
            is_new = True
        copy_to_bucket(source_bucket, object_key, BUCKET_NAME)
        if is_new:
            created_time = datetime.utcnow().strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
            send_sns_notification(BUCKET_NAME, created_time)
        return {
            'statusCode': 200,
            'body': f"Backup complete. Object '{object_key}' copied to '{BUCKET_NAME}'."
        }
    except Exception as e:
        print(f" Error: {str(e)}")
        raise e

1. After adding the code you need to test and deploy the code to make sure the code is running perfectly without any errors .

1. Click on Add trigger , so that whenever an object is been uploaded into the S3 bucket then it automatically triggers the lambda function.

1. Select the Source as S3 , under bucket section select the bucket that you have created . Then click on Add to add the trigger into lambda function.

Step 4 : Go to IAM Roles and Attach the policies.

1. Under lambda function you can see permissions , click on the role name shown below the role name which will redirect to IAM roles and policies .

1. You can see lambda-genie-role-4ttdny90 is the role name , click on Add Permissions to attach the policies.

1. Search for AmazonS3FullAccess and once you find the policy , select that policy and click on Add permission.

Step 5 : Go to SNS and create a SNS topic for Notification

1. click on next step to create a topic , select the topic type as standard .
2. provide the name and Display name for the topic so that when you get notified , it shows by the display name.

1. Then click on create topic to create topic . And once the topic is been create you need to create subscription because the SNS itself doesn’t know the destination point, so we give subscription as Email , SMS , HTTP/HTTPS endpoint or SQS .

2. while creating subscription under protocol, select the type of platform you need to the message to be delivered . In my case i have selected the email , so the message will be delivered to my Gmail.

1. Click on create subscription after giving all the details . After creating the subscription a mail would be delivered to your Gmail by which you have registered for the subscription . You need to confirm the subscription by click on it .

1. After the subscription is been confirmed , you’ll need to click on publish message for publishing the desired message to the user.

1. Provide the subject if needed , then go to message body and type the desired the message that you want to publish . Then click on publish Message. Remember that publish message is used for publishing the message manually.

step 6 : Upload some files into your S3 bucket.

1. Go to your s3 bucket and upload some files or objects into it .

1. After uploading of the files and objects , click on upload . After clicking on upload you should see a new s3 bucket created with timestamp.

1. Let me Breakdown the newly created S3-bucket name.

1. Now go to Gmail , where you will be notified that a new s3 bucket as been created . And this is the final result .

Conclusion

When a file is uploaded to the bucket-genie, a Lambda function creates a new timestamped bucket, copies the file, and sends an email notification via SNS. It demonstrates automated event handling, object replication, and alerting in a scalable cloud setup. This approach is useful for real-time monitoring, backups, and alert-driven applications.