Why does S3 objects download in gzip ContentEncoding via CLI?

Question

Hello,

I can't seem to find this answer, but when I attempt to grab objects from an S3 bucket the metadata I'm getting back is in gzip format. When I try to open the PDF file, it says the file is corrupt.

For example:

```
aws s3api --profile personal get-object --bucket mys3bucket --key "MyInvoice-001.pdf" MyInvoice-001.pdf
{
    "AcceptRanges": "bytes",
    "LastModified": "2023-12-29T06:36:03+00:00",
    "ContentLength": 1123267,
    "ETag": "\"309182placeholdertext4318410\"",
    "ContentEncoding": "gzip",
    "ContentType": "application/pdf",
    "ServerSideEncryption": "AES256",
    "Metadata": {}
}
```

Since I see the ContentEncoding is set to gzip, I decided to see if I could unzip it...

```
mv MyInvoice-001.pdf MyInvoice-001.pdf.gz
gunzip MyInvoice-001.pdf.gz
```

After changing the file extension and unzipping, I can now open the file in Preview.

Is this normal behavior? Do I need my Python code to unzip every gz file when I access a batch of files? Or is there a better way of handling these before processing files?

Answer

This article talks about how to override content-encoding with response-content-encoding.  Hope this helps. https://awscli.amazonaws.com/v2/documentation/api/latest/reference/s3api/get-object.html

Why does S3 objects download in gzip ContentEncoding via CLI?

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