Category: S3

Create a pre-signed upload url for AWS S3 using Golang

Hi everyone,

This is just a quick post on how to create a pre-signed upload url for AWS S3 using Golang.

The generate the presigned url, you’ll need something like the following:

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"github.com/joho/godotenv"
	log "github.com/sirupsen/logrus"
	"os"
	"time"

	"github.com/aws/aws-sdk-go/aws"
	"github.com/aws/aws-sdk-go/aws/session"
	"github.com/aws/aws-sdk-go/service/s3"
)

func main() {

	// Load env vars
	err := godotenv.Load(".env")
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatalf("Error loading .env file: %v", err)
	}

	// Load the bucket name
	s3Bucket := os.Getenv("S3_BUCKET")
	if s3Bucket == "" {
		log.Fatal("an s3 bucket was unable to be loaded from env vars")
	}

	// Prepare the S3 request so a signature can be generated
	svc := s3.New(session.New())
	r, _ := svc.PutObjectRequest(&s3.PutObjectInput{
		Bucket: aws.String(s3Bucket),
		Key:    aws.String("test-file.jpg"),
	})

	// Create the pre-signed url with an expiry
	url, err := r.Presign(15 * time.Minute)
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Println("Failed to generate a pre-signed url: ", err)
		return
	}

	// Display the pre-signed url
	fmt.Println("Pre-signed URL", url)
}

Note that we’re using godotenv to load AWS environment variables containing a few AWS keys. You can get godotenv by running the following:

go get github.com/joho/godotenv

I then have a file called “.env” sitting in the root of my working directory:

S3_BUCKET=<YOUR_BUCKET_NAME>
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<YOUR_AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID>
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<YOUR_AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY>
AWS_REGION=<YOUR_AWS_REGION>

Once you’ve got all of that setup you can run the script, it should output a link in your console window similar to the following:

Pre-signed URL https://YOUR_BUCKET.s3.YOUR_REGION.amazonaws.com/test-file.jpg?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=CREDS&X-Amz-Date=20210717T073809Z&X-Amz-Expires=900&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=GENERATED_SIG

To test the url you can use something like Postman with the following configuration:

Simply pasting the url into the path should populate the headers for you. As for the body, select “binary” and browse for an image. When you’re ready, click “Send”.

You should get a 200 OK response and now be able to see your uploaded image in your destination bucket. Unless you’ve changed the key it should be under the name “test-file.jpg”.

One of the main advantages of using a pre-signed url is that it allows you to upload images directly to AWS and bypass your backend server completely. You can also use it to sign image retrievals. This allows you to give the links a limited life-span – great for preventing hot-linking.

Thanks to the following GitHub post for pointing me in the right direction: https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-go/issues/467#issuecomment-171468806

Upload an Image to S3 Using Post and a Presigned Url

Hi everyone,

Today I’ve been converting my “PUT” upload to S3 to a “POST”. The main motivator for this was to restrict the file size of uploads using a signed policy. Unfortunately this was a pretty tedious process and the error responses from S3 were very vague. Thankfully it’s working now and here’s what I needed to do!

Here’s an excerpt from my nodejs lambda function that generates the presigned url:

/* Creates a pre-signed upload url and then stores a reference in a table */
exports.createUploadUrl = async params => {

    var { databaseHandler, bucketHandler } = params;

    // Create id for upload
    var uploadId = uuidv4();

    // Retrieve pre-signed url
    var bucketDataPromise = createPresignedPostPromise({
        Bucket: process.env.BUCKET_UPLOADS,
        Expires: 60 * 60,
        Conditions: [            
            ["content-length-range", 0, 300000], // 300kb
            [ "eq", "$key", uploadId],
            [ "eq", "$Content-Type", 'image/jpeg' ],
        ]
    });

    // var ddbData = await ddbDataPromise;
    var bucketData = await bucketDataPromise;

    // Wait for database handler to complete operation and then return
    return Helpers.generateResponse({
        data: {
            uploadData: bucketData,
            additionalFields: {
                key: uploadId,
                "Content-Type": 'image/jpeg',
            },
        },
        statusCode: 200
    });
}

You can then retrieve the upload details using a request like the following (Python):

resp = requests.put("https://f86caxqe9f.execute-api.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/Prod/images", data=open(path, 'rb'))

This will return a response similar to the following:

{
    "messages": [],
    "data": {
        "uploadUrl": {
            "url": "YOUR UPLOAD URL",
            "fields": {
                "bucket": "YOUR BUCKET",
                "X-Amz-Algorithm": "AWS4-HMAC-SHA256",
                "X-Amz-Credential": "XXX",
                "X-Amz-Date": "20190107T125044Z",
                "X-Amz-Security-Token": "SECURITY_TOKEN",
                "Policy": "YOUR BASE64 ENCODED POLICY",
                "X-Amz-Signature": "SIGNATURE"
            }
        },
        "uploadId": "UPLOAD_ID"
    }
}

And once you have those details you can use them to upload the image:

# Attempt to retrieve upload url etc
json = resp.json()
data = json["data"]
uploadUrl = data["uploadData"]["url"]
uploadFields = data["uploadData"]["fields"]
uploadFields.update(data["additionalFields"])

try:
    print("Uploading image...",end='')
    headers = {'Content-Type': 'multipart/form-data' }
    files = { 'file': open(path, 'rb')}
    resp = requests.post(uploadUrl, data=uploadFields, files=files)

    # Only show content if there's an error
    if resp.status_code == 200:
        print("Uploaded")
    else:  
        print("ERROR")                          
        print(repr(resp))
        print(repr(resp.content))

except Exception as e:
    print("\r\nFailed to upload image.")
    print("Upload data:")
    print(repr(uploadFields))
    print("Exception:")
    print(repr(e))
    traceback.print_exc()

Hopefully that’s been able to help you out, but feel free to let me know in the comments below if you need more info!

Thanks to these links for the info:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/35923104/522859
https://stackoverflow.com/a/49311831/522859

AWS CLI Copy from Bucket – An error occurred (AccessDenied) when calling the CopyObject operation: Access Denied

Hi everyone,

I ran into the following error while trying to copy files from one bucket to another using the AWS CLI:

An error occurred (AccessDenied) when calling the CopyObject operation: Access Denied

Thankfully this one is pretty self-explanatory. My user was missing the permissions required to view the bucket.

To see your user: aws configure list
To add permissions: view the IAM Management Console

Thanks,
Chris