To download multiple files from an aws bucket to your current directory, you can use recursive, exclude, and include flags. The order of the parameters matters.

Example command:

aws s3 cp s3://data/ . --recursive --exclude "*" --include "2016-08*"

For more info on how to use these filters: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/s3/#use-of-exclude-and-include-filters

The Order of the Parameters Matters

The exclude and include should be used in a specific order, We have to first exclude and then include. The viceversa of it will not be successful.

aws s3 cp s3://data/ . --recursive  --include "2016-08*" --exclude "*" 

This will fail because order of the parameters maters in this case. The include is excluded by the *

aws s3 cp s3://data/ . --recursive --exclude "*" --include "2016-08*"`

This one will work because the we excluded everything but later we had included the specific directory.

Okay I have to say the example is wrong and should be corrected as follows:

aws s3 cp . s3://data/ --recursive --exclude "*" --include "2006-08*" --exclude "*/*"

The . needs to be right after the cp. The final --exclude is to make sure that nothing is picked up from any subdirectories that are picked up by the --recursive (learned that one by mistake...)

This will work for anyone struggling with this by the time they got here.

If there is an error while using ‘ * ’ you can also use recursive, include, and exclude flags like

aws s3 cp s3://myfiles/ . --recursive --exclude "*" --include "file*"