Accessing local filesystem in AWS lambda

Question

Is it possible to access the local filesystem in an AWS lambda function? If so, is there any downside to doing so?

Answer 1

It can be done. You can use this Python function:

localFilename = '/tmp/{}'.format(os.path.basename(key))

s3.download_file(Bucket=bucket, Key=key, Filename=localFilename)

inFile = open(localFilename, "r")

You can use this for the temporary storage and directory /tmp, not to maintain any state.