Link Expiry based on date & views
Documents uploaded in CloudFiles content library can be set to offline status by deactivating link when required to disable access to users who have your document's secured URL links. However, it becomes cumbersome to track each URL and change its status to remove access later.
CloudFiles allows you to set an expiry setting on the files you upload into your CloudFiles content library. Even your files uploaded from other storages such as dropbox / box / google drive / one drive etc.. can have link expiry settings.
In this article we cover date based and view based expiry settings. We also show what happens when the link expires and the user tries to access the file.
Pre-set your expiry settings based on a specific date and time. Using this setting, the link will expire after the given date / time has passed. You can reset this setting to make the link offline / online anytime.
Date based expiry can be set using the simple steps below -
- Navigate to the CloudFiles content library.
- Click on the file you wish to restrict file access by deactivating link.
- Click on the URL you wish set an expiry limit.
- In the link settings page, you will find the expire link generator in the Expiry option.
- In the Expiry option you can set the expiry based on date and time.
The steps are shown in the GIF below.
Pre-set your expiry settings based on a specific number of views. Using this setting, the link will expire after it has been viewed as many times as the expiry limit. You can reset this setting to make the link offline / online anytime.
The views will be uniquely counted for a viewer, which means that a person viewing the file twice will still be counted as one.
View based expiry can be set using the simple steps below -
- Navigate to the CloudFiles content library.
- Click on the file you wish to restrict file access by deactivating link.
- Click on the URL you wish set an expiry limit.
- In the link settings page, you will find the expire link generator in the Expiry option.
- In the Expiry option you can set the expiry based on views.
The option is shown in the screenshot below while the steps were already shown in GIF in previous section.
When lower of the two limits is reached, it will disable your URL and your URL recipients will see an error page when they try to access your URL. You can always reset and change the expiry settings to bring the link back online.
It is important to note that CloudFiles will apply the more restrictive of the two settings. Thus whichever limit is reached first, that would expire the link.
