# Uploading an image to Amazon S3 - help (really) needed

**URL:** <https://forum.freecodecamp.org/t/uploading-an-image-to-amazon-s3-help-really-needed/417502>\
**Category:** General\
**Created:** [August 27, 2020, 8:26am UTC](https://forum.freecodecamp.org/t/uploading-an-image-to-amazon-s3-help-really-needed/417502 "2020-08-27T08:26:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jon.nicholson94](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bc8723/32.png) [@jon.nicholson94](https://forum.freecodecamp.org/u/jon.nicholson94)\
**Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 8:26am UTC](https://forum.freecodecamp.org/t/uploading-an-image-to-amazon-s3-help-really-needed/417502/1 "2020-08-27T08:26:21Z")

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Hi

I’m really hoping someone on freeCodeCamp can help me.

For a bit of a background - I’ve been coding for just under a year now. I’ve been learning primarily JavaScript based languages (Node.js, React etc), and would describe myself as an intermediate now. Definitely not a beginner, but not an expert (unsurprisingly considering how short a time it’s been) either. I can code ‘full-stack’ websites with a back-end and an OK front-end.

I’m now getting to the stage where I get basic concepts, but learning more advanced stuff is hard. Take for example a project I’m working on right now - an estate agents website. I want to upload images to ‘blob’ storage, Amazon S3, but store text-based values in a Mongo database.

I’ve built the front-end, I’ve built most of the back-end. My Mongo database is working great for now. However, I just can’t work out how to upload to Amazon S3.

I’ve grown increasingly frustrated with Stack Overflow over the last few months - people have either been really blunt and saying I should ‘just read the documentation’, some have sent links to websites with tutorials that don’t help, or I don’t get any response at all.

Anyway - to the code. So, I’ve built a POST route, which has a subsequent function. I’ll try and go through step by step explaining the thought behind it.

_As a quick note, this is basically exactly the same as the AWS S3 Node.Js documentation_

```auto
app.post("/homes/store", function(req, res) {

  AWS.config.update({
    accessKeyId: process.env.ID,
    secretAccessKey: process.env.SECRET,
    region: 'eu-west-1'
  });

```

This first section is just initialising AWS from the SDK. Not a problem so far.

```auto
  s3 = new AWS.S3({});

  let uploadParams = {
    Bucket: 'test-bucket',
    Key: 'test-image',
    Body: 'test upload'
};

```

The second part is initialising S3 and creating a variable for uploadParams which will later be called in S3.upload.

```auto
let file = '';

```

This part has confused me the most - AWS state the contents of ‘file’ is a ‘process.arg[3]’. I don’t know what should be contained in here?

```auto
  let fileStream = fs.createReadStream(file);
fileStream.on('error', function(err) {
  console.log('File Error', err);
});

uploadParams.Body = fileStream;
uploadParams.Key = path.basename(file);

s3.upload (uploadParams, function (err, data) {
  if (err) {
    console.log("Error", err);
  } if (data) {
    console.log("Upload Success", data.Location);
  }
});
});

```

The rest is all basically copied and pasted from the documentation.

What I’m aiming to do is POST a form from my front-end, and save the attached file in to my S3 database. I’m not sure how to access this file (I assumed body-parser and ‘req.body.file’?) but I get an error then stating that path’s argument needs to be a string.

I’d really appreciate if anyone would be kind enough to help me re-factor this. I’m guessing I need to use Multer in here somewhere, but tutorials online really haven’t helped me understand.

I know there’s a freeCodeCamp one, but I’m struggling with it as it doesn’t have code examples in there and I’m not a good enough coder to understand what arguments to pass in without seeing it visually.

Thank you - let me know if anything is unclear or if you need anymore info. 😄

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Alioune01](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/freecodecamp/user_avatar/forum.freecodecamp.org/alioune01/32/195636_2.png) [@Alioune01](https://forum.freecodecamp.org/u/Alioune01)\
**Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 12:44pm UTC](https://forum.freecodecamp.org/t/uploading-an-image-to-amazon-s3-help-really-needed/417502/2 "2020-08-27T12:44:31Z")

</div>

```auto
let file = '';

```

> [@jon.nicholson94](#):
>
> This part has confused me the most - AWS state the contents of ‘file’ is a ‘process.arg[3]’. I don’t know what should be contained in here?

Since you use _file_ in the _createReadStream_ function, my guess is that _file_ should be the path to whatever file you want to upload (as per [this source](https://nodejs.org/en/knowledge/advanced/streams/how-to-use-fs-create-read-stream/#:~:text=The)).

`uploadParams.Body = fileStream;`  
Whatever _uploadParams.Body_ does here, see if you can get the value that is supposed to be stored in _fileStream_ by other means (just as a potential solution).

> [@jon.nicholson94](#):
>
> I’m not sure how to access this file (I assumed body-parser and ‘req.body.file’?) but I get an error then stating that path’s argument needs to be a string.

Did you try converting this value into a string first?

Let me know if any of that helped.

P.S. I agree with you about Stack Overflow. You ask a completely new question and they still flag it as a duplicate 😆. I tend to use it just to read the solutions that other people have gotten, not to ask questions.

On the contrary, being able to read documentation is a skill you really should learn as a programmer, as it is very powerful and will increase your ability to explore less popular tools with less community support. Sometimes you just need to do a bit of debugging to see how a function or api works (because some documentation is really bad 😄)! That’s just my 2 cents. I’m intermediate also.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jon.nicholson94](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bc8723/32.png) [@jon.nicholson94](https://forum.freecodecamp.org/u/jon.nicholson94)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2020, 6:35am UTC](https://forum.freecodecamp.org/t/uploading-an-image-to-amazon-s3-help-really-needed/417502/3 "2020-08-28T06:35:02Z")

</div>

Thanks for the response! Really appreciate it. 🙂

I actually managed to figure this out by myself yesterday by (you guessed it) reading the documentation. I introduced Multer and Multer S3 middleware and it’s working great.

I am now just stuck on a different issue in that I need to somehow link the pictures being uploaded to S3 to my MongoDB database - but again, can’t get my head round it.

Thanks again.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Alioune01](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/freecodecamp/user_avatar/forum.freecodecamp.org/alioune01/32/195636_2.png) [@Alioune01](https://forum.freecodecamp.org/u/Alioune01)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2020, 6:48am UTC](https://forum.freecodecamp.org/t/uploading-an-image-to-amazon-s3-help-really-needed/417502/4 "2020-08-28T06:48:44Z")

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You’re welcome. Glad to see that you solved your problem.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ILM](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/freecodecamp/user_avatar/forum.freecodecamp.org/ilm/32/363239_2.png) [@ILM](https://forum.freecodecamp.org/u/ILM)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2021, 6:41pm UTC](https://forum.freecodecamp.org/t/uploading-an-image-to-amazon-s3-help-really-needed/417502/5 "2021-06-01T18:41:52Z")

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Closed on June 1, 2021, 6:41pm UTC