Configure automatic object deletion

To easily manage your Object Storage, you may need to define the lifespan of some of your files. This allows you, for example, to keep some backups only for a specific period.

This guide shows you how to set up automatic file deletion after a specified period or on a specific date.

Prerequisites

• Prepare the environment to use the OpenStack API
• Set OpenStack environment variables

There are two ways to delete your objects/files

• After a certain number of seconds
• On a specific date

After a certain number of seconds

To do this, configure your request's X-Delete-After header

root@server:~$ swift post --header "X-Delete-After: 3600" container test.txt

The test.txt file will be deleted in an hour.

On a specific date

First, you need to know what the deletion date is in epoch format. To help you find the value you need to insert, use a converter.

Then you can enter this date in the X-Delete-At header:

root@server:~$ swift post --header "X-Delete-At: 1448928000000" container test.txt

The file will therefore be deleted on the 1st of December 2015.

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