Terraform AWS VPC + S3 Photo Uploader - Mini Web App

A simple Flask web application to upload photos to an AWS S3 bucket.
This version is deployed on an EC2 instance in a public subnet, using Terraform for easy provisioning.

Features

• Upload images from your browser to S3
• List all uploaded files
• Versioned and encrypted S3 bucket
• Secure access via IAM Role
• Public subnet deployment for easy testing and debugging

Architecture

[Internet] | |--- Public Subnet | EC2 (Flask Web App) | S3 Bucket (versioned, encrypted)

• EC2 has a public IP and security group allows TCP 5000
• Flask app runs on port 5000
• S3 bucket stores uploaded files with versioning and encryption enabled

Setup Instructions

1. Clone the repository

git clone <repo-url>
cd photo-uploader

2. Set up Terraform

terraform init
terraform plan
terraform apply

• Ensure you have AWS credentials configured for Terraform
• EC2 will be deployed in a public subnet with a public IP

3. Connect to EC2

ssh -i /path/to/key.pem ec2-user@<EC2_PUBLIC_IP>

4. Set environment variable and run Flask

export BUCKET_NAME="photo-loader-bucket-eu-west-3"
python3 ~/app.py

• Flask runs on 0.0.0.0:5000

• Keep the terminal open to keep Flask running

• Optionally, run in background: nohup python3 ~/app.py &

5. Access the app

Open a browser and navigate to:

http://<EC2_PUBLIC_IP>:5000

• Upload photos and see the list of files

• Files are saved in S3 bucket with versioning enabled

Notes

Ensure the EC2 IAM Role has permissions for:

s3:PutObject

s3:GetObject

s3:ListBucket on your bucket

Security Group allows TCP 5000 from your IP (or 0.0.0.0/0 for testing)

Future Improvements

Use Gunicorn + Nginx for production-ready deployment

Add HTTPS with an SSL certificate

Add authentication for upload access