How to interact with your project’s cloud media storage¶

Interact with your project’s cloud S3 storage¶

Warning

Note that S3 file operations tend to be destructive and do not necessarily have the same behaviours you may be used to from other models, such as FTP. It’s important that you know what you are doing and understand the consequences of any actions or commands.

Obtain your storage access details¶

SSH into a cloud container, and issue the env command. This will list the environment variables applied to that environment. Amongst them a DEFAULT_STORAGE_DSN value will be listed (note that each environment includes its own storage and has its own DEFAULT_STORAGE_DSN).

This value contains the details you will need to use with a file transfer client for access to the storage bucket. The two examples below show which sections of the DSN correspond to the different parameters, for the hosts s3.amazonaws.com and sos.exo.io:

s3://AKAIIEJALP7LUT6ODIJA:TZJYGCfUZheXG%2BwANMFabbotgBs6d2lxZW06OIbD@example-test-68564d3f78d04cd2935f-8f20b19.aldryn-media.io.s3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/?domain=example-test-68564d3f78d04cd2935f-8f20b19.aldryn-media.io
              key                            secret                                             bucket name                          region       endpoint
s3://EXO52e55beb39187195ddff72219:iITF12F1t321tim9zBxITexrvL_bAghgK_z4w1hEuu00@example-test-765482644ac540dbb23367cf3837580b-f0596a8.sos-ch-dk-2.exo.io/?auth=s3

The key identifies you as a user.

The secret may contain some symbols encoded as hexadecimal values, and you will need to change them back before using them:

%2B must be changed to +
%2F must be changed to /

For any other values beginning with % use a conversion table.

The bucket name identifies the resource you wish to work with.

The region is contained in the endpoint, the S3 host name. Sometimes it may be implicit, as in the case of Amazon’s default us-east-1:

Provider	Endpoint	Region	Location
Amazon	`s3.amazonaws.com`	`us-east-1`	US East (N. Virginia)
	`s3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com`	`eu-central-1`	EU (Frankfurt)
	`s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com`	`eu-west-2`	EU (London)
Exoscale	`sos-ch-dk-2.exo.io`	`ch-dk-2`	Switzerland

See Amazon’s S3 regions table for more information about regions and their names.

The endpoint is the address that the client will need to connect to.

Save the parameters¶

Copy and paste each of these parameters into a text file, so you have them ready for use. Now that you have obtained the connection parameters, you can use them to connect with the client of your choice.

Choose a client¶

How-to guides are provided below for connecting to our storage using:

AWS CLI, Amazon’s official S3 client
s3cmd, an alternative command-line utility
Transmit, a popular storage client for Macintosh
CyberDuck, a popular storage client for Macintosh and Windows

Connect using AWS CLI¶

AWS CLI documentation is Amazon’s official S3 client. It’s a free, Python-based application.

Install and configure AWS CLI¶

Run:

pip install awscli
aws configure

You will be prompted for some of the storage access parameters values, extracted from the DSN, that you copied earlier.

AWS Access Key ID - key
AWS Secret Access Key - secret key
Default region name - storage region
Default output format - leave blank

Interact with your storage¶

Run aws s3 followed by options, commands and parameters. For example, to list the contents of a bucket:

➜ aws s3 ls example-test-68564d3f78d04cd2935f-8f20b19.aldryn-media.io
       PRE filer_public/
       PRE filer_public_thumbnails/

Or, to copy (cp) a file from your own computer to S3:

➜ aws s3 cp example.png s3://example-test-68564d3f78d04cd2935f-8f20b19.aldryn-media.io/example.png
upload: ./example.png to s3://example-test-68564d3f78d04cd2935f-8f20b19.aldryn-media.io/example.png

Using AWS CLI with other providers

For non-AWS providers, such as Exoscale, you will need to add the --url-endpoint option to the command, as the AWS CLI assumes an endpoint on .amazonaws.com/. For the Exoscale example above, you would use:

aws s3 --endpoint-url=https://sos-ch-dk-2.exo.io [...]

Note that the scheme (typically https://) must be included.

Additional usage information¶

Run aws s3 help for more information on commands, or refer to the AWS CLI Command Reference. The AWS CLI can maintain multiple profiles and offers other features but it’s beyond the scope of this documentation to explain that here.

The aws configure command stores the configuration in ~/.aws.

Connect using s3cmd¶

S3cmd is a free Python-based command line tool and client for uploading, retrieving and managing data in Amazon S3 and other cloud storage service providers that use the S3 protocol.

Install and configure s3cmd¶

Run:

pip install s3cmd
s3cmd --configure

You will be prompted for some of the storage access parameters values, extracted from the DSN, that you copied earlier:

Access Key - enter the key from the DSN
Secret Key - enter the secret key from the DSN
Default Region - enter the storage region
S3 Endoint - enter the endpoint from the DSN

All other settings can be left untouched.

When you have entered the values, s3cmd will offer to test a connection with them (note that when using AWS, this will fail - ignore this).

Interact with your storage¶

Run s3cmd followed by options, commands and parameters. For example, to list the contents of a bucket:

s3cmd ls s3://example-test-68564d3f78d04cd2935f-8f20b19.aldryn-media.io

Note that the scheme (s3://) is required in front of the bucket name.

Additional usage information¶

Run s3cmd for more information on commands, or refer to Usage.

Using s3cmd you can take advantage of --recursive properties for iterating over the entire bucket contents; however it’s beyond the scope of this documentation to explain this or other features here.

s3cmd --configure creates a configuration file at ~/.s3cfg.

Connect using Transmit¶

Install the Transmit file transfer application for Macintosh.

Create a new connection. You will need to enter some of the storage access parameters values, extracted from the DSN, that you copied earlier:

Setting	Value
Protocol	Amazon S3
Address	endpoint
Access Key ID	key
Password	secret key
Remote Path	bucket name

Cyberduck¶

Install Cyberduck.

Create a new bookmark (note that you cannot simply use the Open Connection dialog, because this will not allow you to provide the required bucket name in order to proceed). You will be prompted for some of the storage access parameters values, extracted from the DSN, that you copied earlier:

Setting	Value
Protocol	Amazon S3
Server	endpoint
Access Key ID	key
Path (in More Options)	bucket name

On attempting to connect, you will be prompted for the Secret Access Key; use the secret key.

For Exoscale (Divio Swiss region) deployments, you can also download and install the Exoscale profile for Cyberduck, which includes some prepared configuration.

Use the Divio CLI for local access to Cloud storage¶

The project’s media files can be found in the /data/media directory, and can be managed and manipulated in the normal way on your own computer.

Be aware that if you edit project files locally, your operating system may save some hidden files. When you push your media to the cloud, these hidden files will be pushed too. This will however not usually present a problem.

Pushing and pulling media files¶

The Divio CLI includes pull and push commands that target the test or live server as required.

Warning

Note that all push and pull operations completely replace all files at the destination, and do not perform any merges of assets. Locally, the /data/media directory will be deleted and replaced; on the cloud, the entire bucket will be replaced.

Limitations¶

You may encounter some file transfer size limitations when pushing and pulling media using the Divio CLI. Interacting directly with the S3 storage bucket is a way around this.

It can also be much faster, and allows selective changes to files in the system.

Storage ACLs (Access Control Lists)¶

When uploading files to your storage, note that you may need to specify explicitly the ACLs - in effect, the file permissions - on the files. If you don’t set the correct ACLs, you may find that attempts to retrieve them (for example in a web browser) give an “access denied” error.

On AWS S3, the public-read ACL needs to be set (by default it’s private). This is the ACL required for general use.

For example, you can use --acl public-read as a flag for operations such as cp, or aws s3api put-object-acl and aws s3api get-object-acl to set set and get ACLs on existing objects.