Question

Does S3 CDN offer any cache mechanism similar to AWS's Cloudfront's Presigned Cookies?

Posted on March 5, 2025
Deployment Space Object Storage App Platform
Asked by Matthew Huang

I am using pre-signed url for frontend image display. However, each time the page is reloaded a new pre-signed url is generated from the backend. As each url to the same image is different, I am not sure if this is cache-friendly. In AWS’s CloudFront they have pre-signed-cookies. The URL will always be the same for the browser, and the permission is stored in the cookies. Does Digital Ocean have something similar? Or do I have to cache the pre-signed urls myself to avoid high bandwidth width? Thanks

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Jeffrey Wolfe • March 5, 2025

DigitalOcean Spaces CDN doesn’t have a direct equivalent to AWS CloudFront’s pre-signed cookies, but you can still improve caching while using pre-signed URLs.

The main issue is that every time a new pre-signed URL is generated, browsers and caches treat it as a completely new file, preventing efficient caching.

One option is to use a fixed URL with longer expiration times instead of generating a new pre-signed URL on every request. If the images don’t change frequently, setting a longer expiration time for the signed URL can allow browsers to cache it properly. Another important step is configuring Cache-Control headers correctly. If your assets are static, using Cache-Control: public, max-age=31536000, immutable will allow the browser to cache the file long-term without checking for updates.

If you need more control, you can implement a caching mechanism in your backend, storing valid pre-signed URLs in memory (e.g., using Redis) and serving the same URL to users within a given timeframe.