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Object expiry

Object expiry requires that you configure your environment with working S3-compatible credentials.

You can set a bucket’s lifecycle configuration such that it automatically deletes objects after a certain number of days.

Enabling object expiry

First, you need to create a JSON file, lifecycle.json, that contains the lifecycle configuration rule. Be sure to set Days to your desired value:

{
  "Rules": [{
    "ID": "cleanup",
    "Status": "Enabled",
    "Prefix": "",
    "Expiration": {
        "Days": 5
    }
  }]
}

Then, apply this lifecycle configuration to your bucket using one of the following commands:

aws --profile <region> \
  s3api put-bucket-lifecycle-configuration \
  --lifecycle-configuration file://lifecycle.json \
  --bucket <bucket-name>
mc ilm import <region>/<bucket-name> < lifecycle.json
s3cmd -c ~/.s3cfg-<region> setlifecycle lifecycle.json s3://<bucket-name>

Removing object expiry

At some point, you might want to remove the object expiry functionality configuration from a bucket, so that objects in it no longer auto-delete after a period.

With the aws s3api command, you can remove the lifecycle configuration from a bucket:

aws --profile <region> \
  s3api delete-bucket-lifecycle \
  --bucket <bucket-name>

With mc, you are able to remove just an individual bucket lifecycle rule. Assuming your rule uses the ID cleanup, here is how you remove it:

mc ilm rm --id "cleanup" <region>/<bucket-name>

With s3cmd, you can remove the lifecycle configuration from a bucket:

s3cmd -c ~/.s3cfg-<region> dellifecycle s3://<bucket-name>