Object expiry
Using the Swift API, you have the option for objects to automatically be deleted, after they have passed an expiry threshold.
Prerequisites
In order to manage object expiry, be sure that you have installed and
configured the swift command-line interface (CLI). There is
presently no way to set object expiry with the openstack CLI.
Auto-deletion at a fixed date
In order for an object to be automatically deleted at a certain date,
you must first convert that date to a POSIX timestamp. You may do so
with the date command. For example, to retrieve the POSIX timestamp
for February 29, 2024, at 0000 UTC, use this command:
$ TZ=Etc/UTC date -d '2024-02-29' +'%s'
1709164800
You can then set the X-Delete-At header on an object, so that it is
automatically deleted at that time:
$ swift post -H "X-Delete-At: 1709164800" private-container testobj.txt
Then, you can read back the header with swift stat:
$ swift stat private-container testobj.txt
Account: AUTH_30a7768a0ffc40359d6110f21a6e7d88
Container: private-container
Object: testobj.txt
Content Type: binary/octet-stream
Content Length: 12
Last Modified: Mon, 05 Dec 2022 14:09:02 GMT
ETag: 6f5902ac237024bdd0c176cb93063dc4
Accept-Ranges: bytes
X-Timestamp: 1670249342.53870
X-Delete-At: 1709164800
X-Trans-Id: tx00000646596cd018a2d7b-00638dfb91-300de11-default
X-Openstack-Request-Id: tx00000646596cd018a2d7b-00638dfb91-300de11-default
Auto-deletion after a time period
Instead of giving an absolute time with X-Delete-At, you can also
use X-Delete-After (in seconds), so that the object is automatically
deleted after that timespan. This example uses 600 seconds or
10 minutes:
$ swift post -H "X-Delete-After: 600" private-container testobj.txt
The Swift API then converts this into an X-Delete-At header, adding
the specified time span to the date the request is received (indicated
by the X-Timestamp header).
You can then read back the object metadata. Observe that in this
example, the difference between the X-Timestamp and X-Delete-At
headers is 600 seconds:
$ swift stat private-container testobj.txt
Account: AUTH_30a7768a0ffc40359d6110f21a6e7d88
Container: private-container
Object: testobj.txt
Content Type: binary/octet-stream
Content Length: 12
Last Modified: Mon, 05 Dec 2022 14:09:55 GMT
ETag: 6f5902ac237024bdd0c176cb93063dc4
Accept-Ranges: bytes
X-Timestamp: 1670249395.20576
X-Delete-At: 1670249995
X-Trans-Id: tx0000065937c08551ba2be-00638dfbb6-301ddeb-default
X-Openstack-Request-Id: tx0000065937c08551ba2be-00638dfbb6-301ddeb-default
Created: 2022-12-05