Auth Read Object

Authentication flow for readObject

Reference: API Specification for more details.

A common use case for COMS is to download a specific object from object storage. Depending on the download mode specified in the request, the COMS readObject endpoint will return one of the follwoing:

1. The file directly from S3, by first doing a HTTP 302 redirect to a temporary pre-signed S3 object URL
2. The file streamed/proxied through COMS
3. The temporary pre-signed S3 object URL itself

COMS uses the redirect flow by default because it avoids unnecessary network hops. For significantly large object transactions, redirection also has the added benefit of maximizing COMS microservice availability. Since the large transaction does not pass through COMS, it is able to remain capable of handling other client requests.

Figure 2 - The general network flow for a typical COMS object request