[Issue] Empty folder creation fails for AWS S3 Bucket

[ManpreetNRI]

I am trying to create an empty folder in an AWS S3 bucket using the VFS-S3 plugin for the Apache VFS library. Below is a code snippet demonstrating my approach:

FileSystemManager fileSystemManager = VFS.getManager();

// 'root-folder' already exists in 'test-bucket' in the 'eu-central-1' region, as part of the initial configuration
String baseURI = "s3://test-bucket.s3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/root-folder";

FileObject rootFolderFileObject = fileSystemManager.resolveFile(baseURI, null);

// Here, I attempt to create an empty 'child-folder' within 'root-folder'
FileObject childFolderFileObject = rootFolderFileObject.resolveFile("child-folder");
childFolderFileObject.createFolder();

However, this code throws the following error:

[ERROR] [stderr] org.apache.commons.vfs2.FileSystemException: Could not create folder "S3FileName{endpoint='s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com', urlPrefix='null', pathPrefix='test-bucket', bucket='test-bucket', signingRegion='eu-central-1', platformFeatures=PlatformFeaturesImpl{defaultAllowForOwner=true, allowDenyForOwner=true, supportsServerSideEncryption=true, supportsAuthorizedGroup=true}, accessKey='null', secretKey='null'}".
[ERROR] [stderr] 	at deployment.planon.ear//com.github.vfss3.AbstractFileObject.createFolder(AbstractFileObject.java:386)
[ERROR] [stderr] 	at deployment.planon.ear//com.github.vfss3.S3FileObject.createFolder(S3FileObject.java:38)
...
[ERROR] [stderr] Caused by: org.apache.commons.vfs2.FileSystemException: Could not create folder "S3FileName{endpoint='s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com', urlPrefix='null', pathPrefix='test-bucket', bucket='test-bucket', signingRegion='eu-central-1', platformFeatures=PlatformFeaturesImpl{defaultAllowForOwner=true, allowDenyForOwner=true, supportsServerSideEncryption=true, supportsAuthorizedGroup=true}, accessKey='null', secretKey='null'}" because it already exists and is a file.
[ERROR] [stderr] 	at deployment.planon.ear//com.github.vfss3.AbstractFileObject.createFolder(AbstractFileObject.java:375)

Interestingly, when I try to upload a file into a non-existent folder, the library successfully creates the missing folder and uploads the file into it. Here’s the relevant code:

// Create a temporary source file
File tempSourceFile = File.createTempFile("tempSourceFile", ".txt");
tempSourceFile.deleteOnExit();
try (FileWriter fileWriter = new FileWriter(tempSourceFile)) {
    fileWriter.write("This is test data.");
}

FileSystemManager fileSystemManager = VFS.getManager();

// 'root-folder' already exists in 'test-bucket' in the 'eu-central-1' region
String baseURI = "s3://test-bucket.s3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/root-folder";

FileObject rootFolderFileObject = fileSystemManager.resolveFile(baseURI, null);

// Attempt to upload 'child-file.txt' to a non-existent 'child-folder' within 'root-folder'
FileObject childFileObject = rootFolderFileObject.resolveFile("child-folder/child-file.txt");
childFileObject.createFile();

try (InputStream sourceInputStream = new FileInputStream(tempSourceFile);
     OutputStream destinationOutputStream = childFileObject.getContent().getOutputStream()) {
    byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
    int bytesRead;
    while ((bytesRead = sourceInputStream.read(buffer)) != -1) {
        destinationOutputStream.write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
    }
} catch (IOException ex) {
    ex.printStackTrace();
}

This code successfully creates the child-folder within root-folder and uploads child-file.txt into it.

It appears that creating an empty folder directly is not possible, while creating a folder through file upload works as expected. Could this be a bug or a limitation of the VFS-S3 plugin? Any insights into why creating an empty folder fails but implicitly creating one with a file succeeds would be greatly appreciated.