Serving Static Content with S3

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Serving Static Content with S3

S3 is a great way to manage object data, but you can also use it to serve data in the form of a static site. In this lab, we will explore what it looks like to serve static frontend content for a web application using S3. We will create and configure an S3 bucket, then deploy our application's static frontend code to it.

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Lab Info

Level

Intermediate

Last updated

Sep 23, 2025

Duration

30m

Challenge

Create the S3 Bucket

Create an S3 bucket to host our static frontend content.

Configure the bucket to allow public access, and enable static website hosting. In addition, create a bucket policy that will allow all users to read any objects (static files) in the bucket.
Challenge

Build the Frontend Code
You will need to modify the frontend code to point to the PlantShopAPI Lambda function in AWS. This function is already set up, but you will need to access it to obtain its URL.

You can clone the application code from the GitHub repository located here using a CloudShell instance.

Within the code repository, you will need to edit frontend/src/App.js and change the value of the apiUrl variable to point to the URL of the PlantShopAPI Lambda function.

Once you have done that, you can build the frontend code from within the frontend directory with npm:
```
npm install

npm run build
```
This will produce a build directory. The files within this directory are ready for deployment to S3.
Challenge

Deploy the Frontend Code

Deploy the contents of the build directory to the S3 bucket. You can do this from the CloudShell instance using the aws CLI.

Once this step is complete, you should be able to access the Plant Shop app using the S3 bucket's static website URL.

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