GET'> HEAD'> PUT'> POST'> DELETE'> '> '> ]> This section introduces a command-line utility, cURL, and demonstrates interacting with the ReST interfaces through that utility.

cURL is a command-line tool which is available on most UNIX®-like environments and Mac OS X® and can be downloaded for Windows®. For more information on cURL, visit http://curl.haxx.se/. cURL allows you to transmit and receive HTTP requests and responses from the command-line or from within a shell script. This makes it possible to work with the ReST API directly without using one of the client APIs. The following cURL command-line options will be used -X METHOD Specify the HTTP method to request (&HEAD;, &GET;, etc.) -i Dump HTTP response headers to stdout. -H HEADER Specify an HTTP header in the request.

To use the ReST API, you must obtain a authorization token, which you pass to each request in the X-Auth-Token header. The following example demonstrates how to use cURL to obtain the authorization token and the URL of the storage system. curl -i \ -H "X-Auth-Key: jdoesecretpassword" \ -H "X-Auth-User: jdoe" \ https://auth.api.yourcloud.com/v1.0 HTTP/1.1 204 No Content Date: Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:31:39 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.3 X-Storage-Url: https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343 X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae Content-Length: 0 Connection: close Content-Type: application/octet-stream The storage URL and authentication token are returned in the headers of the response. After authentication, you can use cURL to perform &HEAD;, &GET;, &DELETE;, &POST; and &PUT; requests on the storage service.

A &HEAD; request can be sent to the storage service to determine how much data you have stored in the system and the number of containers you are using. Use the -X switch to specify the correct HTTP method and the -i to dump the HTTP response headers to terminal output (stdout). curl –X HEAD -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343 HTTP/1.1 204 No Content Date: Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:38:14 GMT Server: Apache X-Account-Container-Count: 22 X-Account-Bytes-Used: 9891628380 Content-Type: text/plain The HTTP request must include a header to specify the authentication token. The HTTP headers in the response indicate the number of containers in this storage account and the total bytes stored for the entire account.

The simplest operation for Object Storage is to simply list the containers you have, which when you don't have any containers yet isn't terribly exciting: curl –X GET -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343 HTTP/1.1 204 No Content X-Account-Object-Count: 0 X-Account-Bytes-Used: 0 X-Account-Container-Count: 0 Accept-Ranges: bytes X-Trans-Id: txe8ca5138ac8643ec84070543a0c9c91e Content-Length: 0 Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 17:07:01 GMT So, you take the X-Auth-Token obtained from the authentication operation, pass it as a header value, execute the operation against the URL obtained from the authentication operation, and force the GET verb with the -X switch. What you get back tells you there aren't any containers. Next, let's create a container and then do the listing again: curl –X PUT -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/george HTTP/1.1 201 Created Content-Length: 18 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 X-Trans-Id: txb25576385284476d9fa6c73835f21650 Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 17:44:20 GMT 201 Created Append the container name to the URL and force the PUT verb. That creates a container, which we can now see when we do a listing: curl –X GET -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343 HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Account-Object-Count: 0 X-Account-Bytes-Used: 0 X-Account-Container-Count: 1 Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 7 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Trans-Id: txaedd6b080626453399c9f5febbddb73b Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 17:44:23 GMT george You may have noticed the account metadata that comes back from the listing call. As you'd guess, it'll tell you how many objects you have, how much space you are using, and how many containers you are using.

If you have a large number of containers, it is sometimes more convenient to page through them than getting some big long list of them. If I create more containers and then do a regular listing, here's what it looks like with five containers: curl –X GET -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343 HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Account-Object-Count: 0 X-Account-Bytes-Used: 0 X-Account-Container-Count: 5 Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 31 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Trans-Id: txb28795cc25b04f0dbce408dfa5a3cfc9 Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:03:06 GMT cosmo dogs elaine george jerry Suppose I want a page size of 2, all I do is append a ""?limit=2"" to my URL: curl –X GET -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343?limit=2 HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Account-Object-Count: 0 X-Account-Bytes-Used: 0 X-Account-Container-Count: 5 Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 11 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Trans-Id: tx940ee02c1a65451e96a2a2532e3a7ce7 Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:05:30 GMT cosmo dogs Not surprisingly, I only get two containers. To get the next page, you tell the system which item you last saw with the "marker=" specifier: curl –X GET -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343?marker=dogs\&limit=2 HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Account-Object-Count: 0 X-Account-Bytes-Used: 0 X-Account-Container-Count: 5 Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 14 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Trans-Id: tx2a69f7ec38c34078a185c5875a4c0e34 Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:15:00 GMT elaine george Notice that I had to use \& so that my bash shell didn't try to interpret the & as wanting to run something in its own thread. With that in place, you get the next page of items that appear after the marker.

In other situations, like if you are working on a language binding on top of the REST API, you might want more structured data back from the method calls. By appending a "format=" and then choosing either json or xml, you can get that structured data back you've been dreaming about. curl –X GET -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343?format=json HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Account-Object-Count: 0 X-Account-Bytes-Used: 0 X-Account-Container-Count: 5 Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 187 Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8 X-Trans-Id: txd408573a51d2423c848cba191fbede9b Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:17:33 GMT [{"name":"cosmo", "count":0,"bytes":0}, {"name":"dogs","count":0,"bytes":0}, {"name":"elaine","count":0,"bytes":0}, {"name":"george","count":0,"bytes":0}, {"name":"jerry","count":0,"bytes":0}] curl –X GET -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343?format=xml HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Account-Object-Count: 0 X-Account-Bytes-Used: 0 X-Account-Container-Count: 5 Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 479 Content-Type: application/xml; charset=utf-8 X-Trans-Id: tx5e5685a15d0b406799b6a425b1150e4c Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:17:38 GMT <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <account name="AUTH_a23f73d2-abfb-4656-af94-32ddec35dab8"> <container><name>cosmo</name><count>0</count><bytes>0</bytes></container> <container><name>dogs</name><count>0</count><bytes>0</bytes></container> <container><name>elaine</name><count>0</count><bytes>0</bytes></container> <container><name>george</name><count>0</count><bytes>0</bytes></container> <container><name>jerry</name><count>0</count><bytes>0</bytes></container> </account> The remainder of the examples in this document will use the standard, non-serialized output but all operations accept the format argument. You might notice that when you use one of the formats, you get more information about the containers. That's the per-container metadata, which is covered in the next section.

You can get at container metadata directly simply by appending the name of the container to a HEAD request: curl –X HEAD -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/dogs HTTP/1.1 204 No Content X-Container-Object-Count: 0 X-Container-Bytes-Used: 0 Accept-Ranges: bytes X-Trans-Id: tx3dd984f9482341dd97546e9d49d65e90 Content-Length: 0 Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:39:41 GMT Not very exciting without any objects in the container, but you get the idea. While you cannot update or delete container metadata, you can delete a container: curl –X DELETE -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/george HTTP/1.1 204 No Content Content-Length: 0 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 X-Trans-Id: tx3fa3857f266f44319d9b8f4bf7ce7fc8 Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:42:58 GMT Then let's confirm the delete by listing the containers again: curl –X GET -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343 HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Account-Object-Count: 0 X-Account-Bytes-Used: 0 X-Account-Container-Count: 4 Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 24 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Trans-Id: tx2475741852b849ce9403e382fe3f8015 Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:43:08 GMT cosmo dogs elaine jerry

A particularly important metadata element for containers is X-Container-Read, which establishes the ACL permissions on who can read objects in the container. Prior to being set, the ACL logic default to only be accessible to someone with a valid X-Auth-Token for the account in question. Doing a simple listing of a container shows us the absence of X-Container-Read in this default situation: curl –X GET -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/jerry HTTP/1.1 204 No Content X-Container-Object-Count: 0 X-Container-Bytes-Used: 0 Accept-Ranges: bytes X-Trans-Id: tx3aa52e951fc64b63bc1fda27902b9bd3 Content-Length: 0 Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 03:29:22 GMT Now we'll set the X-Container-Read. For a full explanation of valid values, see: http://swift.openstack.org/misc.html#acls but for our simple needs, we'll enable read access and listing access to anybody: curl –X PUT -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ -H "X-Container-Read: .r:*,.rlistings" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/jerry HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted Content-Length: 58 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 X-Trans-Id: txf2befb56b1854a50995f710f2db48089 Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 03:33:16 GMT 202 Accepted The request is accepted for processing. To see the metadata change, do a listing again: curl –X GET -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/jerry HTTP/1.1 204 No Content X-Container-Object-Count: 0 X-Container-Read: .r:*,.rlistings X-Container-Bytes-Used: 0 Accept-Ranges: bytes X-Trans-Id: txb40eb86d949345f7bc66b01e8b63c3a5 Content-Length: 0 Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 03:33:36 GMT The side effect of giving anybody read access is that any object in the container is now accessible from a browser simply by entering the X-Storage-URL used throughout the session and append the object name. For example: https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/jerry/cereal.jpg would be the URL of an object named "cereal.jpg" in the container "jerry" that has been made publicly accessible using this method.

Enough with containers already, let's start to upload some objects. Suppose you had a local directory full of dog pictures: $ ls -l total 504 -rw-r--r--@ 1 petecj2 staff 44765 Nov 7 14:49 JingleRocky.jpg -rw-r--r--@ 1 petecj2 staff 100864 Nov 7 14:47 RockyAndBuster.jpg -rw-r--r--@ 1 petecj2 staff 107103 Nov 7 14:47 SittingBuster.jpg In order to put one of them in a container called "dogs" with cURL, you'd do this: curl –X PUT -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ -T JingleRocky.jpg" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/dogs/JingleRocky.jpg HTTP/1.1 201 Created Content-Length: 118 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Etag: f7d40eceffdd9c2ecab226105737b2a6 Last-Modified: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:51:29 GMT X-Trans-Id: txd131cc897c78403daf5fad010d4d7152 Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:51:30 GMT <html> <head> <title>201 Created</title> </head> <body> <h1>201 Created</h1> <br /><br /> </body> </html> The object gets named from whatever we append to the URL path beyond the container name and the -T switch lets us name a file to push with the operation as the request body. We can confirm the upload by checking the container again: curl –X GET -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/dogs HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Container-Object-Count: 1 X-Container-Read: .r:*,.rlistings X-Container-Bytes-Used: 44765 Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 16 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Trans-Id: tx83be89d4e1a34eacbfeebcdfc7a7f2e7 Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:56:25 GMT JingleRocky.jpg Notice that the container metadata now reflects the number of objects and the bytes match what we saw when we did the directory listing. After uploading the other two similarly, we get a full object listing: curl –X GET -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/dogs HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Container-Object-Count: 3 X-Container-Read: .r:*,.rlistings X-Container-Bytes-Used: 252732 Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 53 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Trans-Id: txae17dfa78da64117aaf07585a1b02115 Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 23:00:56 GMT JingleRocky.jpg RockyAndBuster.jpg SittingBuster.jpg

Creation of a static large object is done in several steps. First we divide the content into pieces and upload each piece into a segment object. Then we create a manifest object. In this example, we will place the segment objects into the "segments" container and the manifest object into the "images" container. We are not required to do this, but using a dedicated container for segment objects is convenient. Assuming we've already divided our image into three files, let's upload them. We have removed non-essential response headers so you can see the important details. curl –X PUT -i -H "X-Auth-Token: 12345" -T ./piece1 https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/segments/terrier-jpg-one HTTP/1.1 201 Created Content-Length: 4000000 Etag: f7365c1419b4f349592c00bd0cfb9b9a curl –X PUT -i -H "X-Auth-Token: 12345" -T ./piece2 https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/segments/terrier-jpg-two HTTP/1.1 201 Created Content-Length: 2000000 Etag: ad81e97b10e870613aecb5ced52adbaa curl –X PUT -i -H "X-Auth-Token: 12345" -T ./piece3 https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/segments/terrier-jpg-three HTTP/1.1 201 Created Content-Length: 1000 Etag: 00b046c9d74c3e8f93b320c5e5fdc2c3 At this stage we are ready to create the manifest listing. Notice that the size and ETag are copied from uploads above. Lets use an editor to create a file called manifest.json with the following content: [ { "path": "segments/terrier-jpg-one", "etag": "f7365c1419b4f349592c00bd0cfb9b9a", "size_bytes": 4000000 }, { "path": "segments/terrier-jpg-two", "etag": "ad81e97b10e870613aecb5ced52adbaa", "size_bytes": 2000000 }, "path": "segments/terrier-jpg-three", "etag": "00b046c9d74c3e8f93b320c5e5fdc2c3", "size_bytes": 1000 { } ] The final operation is to upload this content into a manifest object. To indicate that this is a manifest object, you need to specify the ?multipart-manifest=put query string. curl –X PUT -i -H "X-Auth-Token: 12345" -T ./manifest.json https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/images/terrier-jpg?multipart-manifest=put We can now examine our static large object. Notice that the size is the total size of all the segments. curl –X HEAD -i -H "X-Auth-Token: 12345" https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/images/terrier-jpg HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 6001000 Etag: "0c922c37f915efb1c9b97e6328b3e660"

Exactly like listing containers, objects can be listed in pages at a time using markers to denote pages. From the previous example with 3 objects in the container "dogs", the list can be paged with the "limit" query string variable: curl –X GET -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/dogs?limit=2 HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Container-Object-Count: 3 X-Container-Read: .r:*,.rlistings X-Container-Bytes-Used: 252732 Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 35 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Trans-Id: tx5e00fa9fa895423198bc814cb0c6162d Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 03:53:51 GMT JingleRocky.jpg RockyAndBuster.jpg And the second page fetched with: curl –X GET -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/dogs?marker=RockyAndBuster.jpg\&limit=2 HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Container-Object-Count: 3 X-Container-Read: .r:*,.rlistings X-Container-Bytes-Used: 252732 Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 18 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Trans-Id: txe1287a7179dc4dfd98610850a0fff157 Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 03:54:21 GMT SittingBuster.jpg

Now we'll retrieve an object previously uploaded. First, we'll remove the local copy: $ ls -l total 504 -rw-r--r--@ 1 petecj2 staff 44765 Nov 7 14:49 JingleRocky.jpg -rw-r--r--@ 1 petecj2 staff 100864 Nov 7 14:47 RockyAndBuster.jpg -rw-r--r--@ 1 petecj2 staff 107103 Nov 7 14:47 SittingBuster.jpg $ rm JingleRocky.jpg $ ls -l total 416 -rw-r--r--@ 1 petecj2 staff 100864 Nov 7 14:47 RockyAndBuster.jpg -rw-r--r--@ 1 petecj2 staff 107103 Nov 7 14:47 SittingBuster.jpg Be sure not to use -i switch here since what we want is the raw data, which we'll then pipe to a file: curl –X GET \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/dogs/JingleRocky.jpg > JingleRocky.jpg $ ls -l total 504 -rw-r--r-- 1 petecj2 staff 44765 Nov 7 15:11 JingleRocky.jpg -rw-r--r--@ 1 petecj2 staff 100864 Nov 7 14:47 RockyAndBuster.jpg -rw-r--r--@ 1 petecj2 staff 107103 Nov 7 14:47 SittingBuster.jpg Next, Object Storage provides a facility to copy objects from one container to another entirely on the server side. To do this, you do a PUT with the destination container and new object name while passing a special X-Copy-From header and a Content-Length of zero: curl –X PUT -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ -H "X-Copy-From: /dogs/JingleRocky.jpg" \ -H "Content-Length: 0" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/elaine/JingleRocky.jpg HTTP/1.1 201 Created Content-Length: 118 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Etag: f7d40eceffdd9c2ecab226105737b2a6 X-Copied-From: dogs/JingleRocky.jpg Last-Modified: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 23:23:53 GMT X-Trans-Id: tx244cd14df1b94d8c91ec5dcf8c5f9da4 Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 23:23:54 GMT <html> <head> <title>201 Created</title> </head> <body> <h1>201 Created</h1> <br /><br /> </body> </html> You can then confirm the new location of the object. To do this, you do a GET with the destination container to see the listing of the object: curl –X GET -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/elaine/ HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Container-Object-Count: 1 X-Container-Bytes-Used: 44765 Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 16 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Trans-Id: tx46986b4a09b34790924fd43842b2b0dd Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 23:24:05 GMT JingleRocky.jpg To delete an object from its container, simply use the DELETE verb: curl –X DELETE -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/elaine/JingleRocky.jpg HTTP/1.1 204 No Content Content-Length: 0 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 X-Trans-Id: txd45f04422b034e6f8447de400b78cbf3 Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 23:32:39 GMT Confirming the deletion by doing a container listing: curl –X GET -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/elaine/ HTTP/1.1 204 No Content X-Container-Object-Count: 0 X-Container-Bytes-Used: 0 Accept-Ranges: bytes X-Trans-Id: txc9b43bf4d896405eb9a88ca468bf7b2d Content-Length: 0 Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 23:32:41 GMT

Objects can have whatever metadata keys/values you choose. Simply POST an HTTP Header to the object in the form of X-Object-Meta-<key>: <value>. Like this: curl –X POST -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ -H "X-Object-Meta-Breed: Terrier pit bull mix"" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/dogs/JingleRocky.jpg <html> <head> <title>202 Accepted</title> </head> <body> <h1>202 Accepted</h1> The request is accepted for processing.<br /><br /> </body> </html> And then read the object metadata with a HEAD on the object path: curl –X HEAD -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/dogs/JingleRocky.jpg HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Object-Meta-Breed: Terrier pit bull mix Last-Modified: Tue, 08 Nov 2011 01:26:49 GMT Etag: f7d40eceffdd9c2ecab226105737b2a6 Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 44765 Content-Type: image/jpeg X-Trans-Id: txa8bff9ad7ef844829103c1f9b8c20781 Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2011 01:29:35 GMT

For the last section, we come to the most confusing concept in Object Storage. In most storage systems, you have the ability to create custom hierarchies of files so that you can better organize them. On its surface, Object Storage only gives you one level of hierarchy in the form of containers. However, it turns out that you can get creative with naming your objects to give yourself the same effect as having hierarchical containers. Let's start with a fresh container without any objects in it: curl –X PUT -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/photos HTTP/1.1 201 Created Content-Length: 18 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 X-Trans-Id: txc78254a41b374b6ea10590d90874f769 Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:06:22 GMT 201 Created Now list the new container: curl –X GET -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/photos HTTP/1.1 204 No Content X-Container-Object-Count: 0 X-Container-Bytes-Used: 0 Accept-Ranges: bytes X-Trans-Id: tx49112200f7934c2bab1de3ae103c368e Content-Length: 0 Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:06:26 GMT Next, add an object but prefix the name with the hierarchy desired: curl –X PUT -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ -T JingleRocky.jpg \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/photos/terriers/JingleRocky.jpg HTTP/1.1 201 Created Content-Length: 118 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Etag: f7d40eceffdd9c2ecab226105737b2a6 Last-Modified: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:09:18 GMT X-Trans-Id: txe34fdf2704f044e3a7102256386b1cb7 Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:09:19 GMT <html> <head> <title>201 Created</title> </head> <body> <h1>201 Created</h1> <br /><br /> </body> </html> Do it again with a different object and prefix: curl –X PUT -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ -T SittingBuster.jpg \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/photos/chihuahuas/SittingBuster.jpg HTTP/1.1 201 Created Content-Length: 118 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Etag: e692e744c7180ee368166a24f1a2fa9b Last-Modified: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:52:25 GMT X-Trans-Id: txe229d03af5ea4d2ea1071def213c3f02 Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:52:25 GMT <html> <head> <title>201 Created</title> </head> <body> <h1>201 Created</h1> <br /><br /> </body> </html> Now list the container, revealing the prefixes: curl –X GET -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/photos HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Container-Object-Count: 2 X-Container-Bytes-Used: 151868 Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 54 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Trans-Id: tx8544a17e8b1e4da693145fb5f2e6db43 Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:53:43 GMT chihuahuas/SittingBuster.jpg terriers/JingleRocky.jpg If you want to perform hierarchical listings, with the prefixes in place, you can use the "path" query string variable: curl –X GET -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/photos?path=terriers HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Container-Object-Count: 2 X-Container-Bytes-Used: 151868 Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 25 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Trans-Id: tx3f1b9575d4de4a7d97ba3f9ad81923cc Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:55:12 GMT terriers/JingleRocky.jpg If you wanted to see what prefixes were in place, you can use the "delimiter" query string variable to distinguish prefix paths from object names: curl –X GET -i \ -H "X-Auth-Token: fc81aaa6-98a1-9ab0-94ba-aba9a89aa9ae" \ https://storage.swiftdrive.com/v1/CF_xer7_343/photos?delimiter=/ HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Container-Object-Count: 2 X-Container-Bytes-Used: 151868 Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 22 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Trans-Id: tx7222a3dd73fe44b888db4e58cc647d1e Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:57:40 GMT chihuahuas/ terriers/ Using these in combination allows you to discover directories within a particular path and then further drill down based on the results.