for those who get here without an answer, I managed to do it as follows…

Change getObject for getCommand, look:

$client = new Aws\S3\S3Client(
[
  'version' => 'latest',
  'region' => 'nyc3',
  'endpoint' => 'https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com',
  'credentials' => [
                      'key' => 'myKey',
                      'secret' => 'mySecret',
                   ]
]);

$cmd = $client->getCommand('GetObject',
[
  'Bucket' => 'MyBucket',
  'Key' => 'FileName.pdf' (your file),
  'ResponseContentDisposition' => 'attachment; filename = "FileName.pdf'(your file)
]);

$request = $client->createPresignedRequest($cmd, '+5 minutes');
$preSignedUrl = (string) $ request-> getUri ();

header ('Location:'. $ preSignedUrl); //force dowload

Spaces was designed to be compatible with the S3 API in order to allow users to leverage existing tools. Accessing private files requires generating a signature for authentication. As this is quite complicated, you should generally use an existing library in your programing language of choice.

Check out this question for examples in a number of languages:

• How to use DigitalOcean Spaces with the AWS S3 SDKs?

Let us know more about how you are trying to access the files, and we can provide a more specific answer.

Hi,
We are trying to access the Private files from Spaces using Elfinder File Manager. But not able to access when it is having Private Access. So we are not able to access unless we give them Public Access which is may not good for the application. If we give Public access people can access using URL through any browser without any permissions.

We are able to upload files to the Spaces also, but not able to access same file that we just uploaded. So we would like to upload/access the files with Private access through Elfinder File Manager.

Currently we are using S3 Adapter. Appreciate if any suggestions.

Thank you very much
Venu Kommu

I tried a few different libraries for generating an S4 signature (I have to confess I don’t understand how to do it myself, the instructions are just too unclear) and I keep getting a SignatureDoesNotMatch error. I wonder if part of the problem might be that those libraries are optimized for AWS, and not DO?

Bumping this, I am having the same problem but cannot find an answer for it in Node.js/express.

Bumping this in the new year, as this hasn’t been answered quite well yet?
Anyone can help?

Hi there! I am having the same problem! Any solution??

while bumping on this question I was looking for to download a private file from my react application with node as a backend.

Here is how I acheived it.

    const spacesEndpoint = new AWS.Endpoint(process.env.END_POINT);
    const s3 = new AWS.S3({
        endpoint: spacesEndpoint,
        accessKeyId: process.env.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID,
        secretAccessKey: process.env.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY,
    });

Then, generate a signed url for your file and send it to frontend.

  const url = s3.getSignedUrl('getObject', {
    Bucket: process.env.BUCKET_NAME,
    Key: `pdfs/exams/v1/sthrandom.pdf`,
  });
  res.send(url);