Rails PaperClip: How can you convert a public_read file to private?

Question

I have recently switched paperclip uploads to use :s3_permissions => :private

https://github.com/thoughtbot/paperclip/wiki/Restricting-Access-to-Objects-Stored-on-Amazon-S3

All new uploads are now secured and private.

Now I am trying to secure all previous uploads.

Is it possible to trigger a process that will re-upload as secure with amazon S3?

Answer 1

It would be far easier to update the permissions on all of the objects instead of re-uploading them.

Two ways I can think of to do this:

1. Paperclip has a set_permissions method for attachments using s3 storage, so you could loop through your existing models and call something like user.avatar.set_permissions(:private) on each record.

2. A tool like s3cmd would also be well suited to accomplish this. Once installed, a command like this would do it:

s3cmd setacl --acl-private --recursive --verbose s3://your_bucket/paperclip/path

UPDATE: set_permissions does not do what you would think; it's used when creating the object but does not update the object. Instead, use the paperclip s3_object method and then update the object using the aws-sdk api:

user.avatar.s3_object.acl.put(acl: 'private')