Swift Object Store

Goal

Use the command-line utility swift to perform operations on your object store.

Requirements

Swift client documentation

swift --help

Useful commands

For a more detailed explanation of any specific command, add --help after it:

swift list --help

$ swift list --help

Usage: swift list [--long] [--lh] [--totals] [--prefix <prefix>]
                  [--delimiter <delimiter>] [--header <header:value>]
                  [--versions] [<container>]

Lists the containers for the account or the objects for a container.

Positional arguments:
  [<container>]           Name of container to list object in.

Optional arguments:
  -l, --long            Long listing format, similar to ls -l.
  --lh                  Report sizes in human readable format similar to
                        ls -lh.
  -t, --totals          Used with -l or --lh, only report totals.
  -p <prefix>, --prefix <prefix>
                        Only list items beginning with the prefix.
  -d <delim>, --delimiter <delim>
                        Roll up items with the given delimiter. For containers
                        only. See OpenStack Swift API documentation for what
                        this means.
  -j, --json            Display listing information in json
  --versions            Display listing information for all versions
  -H, --header <header:value>
                        Adds a custom request header to use for listing.

Create an object container

Create the container named "flex-container01":

swift post flex-container01

If you like, make the container public:

swift post --header "X-Container-Read: .r:*" flex-container01

Verify the container's configuration:

swift stat flex-container01

Upload files to the container

Upload the entire contents of a folder to the container:

swift upload flex-container01 example-files/

$ swift upload flex-container01 example-files/
example-docs/readme.md
example-docs/image01.jpg
example-docs/image02.png

Uploading an entire folder will add that prefix to your filenames inside the container.

swift list flex-container01

$ swift list flex-container01
example-docs/readme.md
example-docs/image01.jpg
example-docs/image02.png
document01.rtf
document02.rtf

Filter the display of files only with the prefix by using the --prefix argument:

swift list flex-container01 --prefix example-docs

$ swift list flex-container01 --prefix example-docs
example-docs/readme.md
example-docs/image01.jpg
example-docs/image02.png

Downloading files

When the container is public, you can access each file using a specific URL, made up of your region's endpoint, the name of your container, the prefix (if any) of your object, and finally, the object name.

<REGIONAL_ENDPOINT>/v1/AUTHxxx/flex-container01/example-docs/readme.md

Using the swift client to download a single file:

swift download flex-container01 document01.rtf

Using the swift client to download multiple files with the same prefix:

swift download flex-container01 --prefix example-docs

Deleting containers or objects

swift delete flex-container01 document01.rtf

$ swift delete flex-container01 document01.rtf
document01.rtf

Similar to downloading, you can delete multiple files with the same prefix:

swift delete flex-container01 example-docs/*

$ swift delete flex-container01 example-docs/*
example-docs/readme.md
example-docs/image01.jpg
example-docs/image02.png

Deleting a container:

swift delete flex-container01

$ swift delete flex-container01
document01.rtf
document02.rtf

Deleting a container will delete all files in the container.

Setting and removing object expiration

Swift objects can be scheduled to expire by setting either the X-Delete-At or X-Delete-After header.

Once the object expires, swift will no longer serve the object, and it will be deleted.

Expire at a specific time

Obtain the current Unix epoch timestamp by running date +%s.

Set an object to expire at an absolute Unix epoch timestamp:

swift post flex-container01 document01.rtf -H "X-Delete-At:UNIX_EPOCH_TIMESTAMP"

$ swift post flex-container01 document01.rtf -H "X-Delete-At:1711732649"

Verify the header has been applied to the object:

swift stat flex-container01 document01.rtf

Expire after a number of seconds

Set an object to expire after a relative amount of time, in seconds:

swift post flex-container01 document01.rtf -H "X-Delete-After:SECONDS"

$ swift post flex-container01 document01.rtf -H "X-Delete-After:42"

The X-Delete-After header will be converted to X-Delete-At.

Verify the header has been applied to the object:

swift stat flex-container01 document01.rtf

Remove the expire header

If you no longer want the object to expire, you can remove the X-Delete-At header:

swift post flex-container01 document01.rtf -H "X-Delete-At:"

Additional documentation

Additional documentation can be found at the official swift client site, on the Openstack Documentation Site.
https://docs.openstack.org/python-openstackclient/latest/