User guide

Specifying a Credential Provider or Provider Chain

If you want to specify a different credential provider than the default credential provider chain, you can

specify it in the client constructor.

To specify a specific credentials provider

• Provide an instance of a credentials provider or provider chain to a service client constructor that takes

an AWSCredentialsProvider interface as input. For example, to use environment credentials specifically:

AmazonS3 s3Client = new AmazonS3Client(new EnvironmentVariableCredentialsPro

vider());

For the full list of SDK for Java-supplied credential providers and provider chains, see the list of "All known

implementing classes" in the reference topic for AWSCredentialsProvider.

Tip

You can use this technique to supply credential providers or provider chains that you create, by

implementing your own credential provider that implements the AWSCredentialsProvider

interface, or by sub-classing the AWSCredentialsProviderChain class.

Explicitly Specifying Credentials

If neither the default credential chain or a specific or custom provider or provider chain works for your

code, you can set credentials explicitly by supplying them yourself. If you have retrieved temporary

credentials using AWS STS, use this method to specify the credentials for AWS access.

To explicitly supply credentials to an AWS client:

Instantiate a class that provides the AWSCredentials interface, such as BasicAWSCredentials, supplying

it with the AWS access key and secret key you will use for the connection.

Provide the class instance to a service client constructor that takes an AWSCredentials interface as input.

For example:

BasicAWSCredentials awsCreds = new BasicAWSCredentials(access_key_id,

secret_access_key)

AmazonS3 s3Client = new AmazonS3Client(awsCreds);

When using temporary credentials obtained from AWS STS (p. 61), create a BasicSessionCredentials

object, passing it the STS-supplied credentials and session token:

BasicSessionCredentials basic_session_creds = new BasicSessionCredentials(

session_creds.getAccessKeyId(),

session_creds.getSecretAccessKey(),

session_creds.getSessionToken());

AmazonS3Client s3 = new AmazonS3Client(basic_session_creds);

Version v1.0.0

AWS SDK for Java Developer Guide

Specifying a Credential Provider or Provider Chain