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Downloading files from object stores

Accessing files by URL​

Files uploaded as public to object stores can be accessed by their URL, whether through the object store's file listing page on the dashboard, or on the command line.

As an example, if you followed the command-line file uploading document, you would be able to use the URL generated by the upload command to access the file directly, as output by s3cmd:

...
upload: 'cli_upload_demo.txt' -> 's3://demo-store/cli/cli_upload_demo.txt'  [1 of 1]
 80 of 80   100% in    0s   572.01 B/s  done
Public URL of the object is: http://objectstore.fra1.civo.com/demo-store/cli/cli_upload_demo.txt

This file would be accessible through e.g. your web browser:

Uploaded file accessed using a web browser pointed at the object's URL

Accessing uploaded files using the S3 API​

Aside from being able to access public files in object stores through a browser or a tool such as curl by providing the URI, the S3 API allows for downloading files on the command line.

note

The following section assumes your s3cmd is configured to access the object store in question as per the object store credentials documentation

As an example, a directory called cli/ was created in the documentation for uploading files.

If you were to want to download that entire directory's contents to another machine, you could run:

$ s3cmd --host=${AWS_HOST} --host-bucket=s3://test-store get --recursive s3://test-store/cli/

download: 's3://test-store/cli/cli_upload_demo.txt' -> './cli_upload_demo.txt'  [1 of 1]
 80 of 80   100% in    0s   596.15 B/s  done

In the above command, the crucial parts are the get command to download the path specified, and the --recursive switch which allows downloading the entire contents of a directory. If a path is not specified, the contents of the directory location will be downloaded to the current working directory on the machine where the command is run.

If only a single file is needed, its path and filename can be specified without needing the --recursive option.

tip

If you want to download a file that was added to the store as Private you would need to perform the download on the command line as this passes the credentials to authorise you to perform the action.