Set up Contabo Object Storage (S3 compatible) in a Laravel application

Introduction

I think most people are gonna use S3, but AWS pricing doesn't feel right for me, so I found Contabo Object Storage. It's S3 compatible and the pricing is very cheap, so I decided to use it for my Laravel application. At the time of writing, the pricing is $2.99 per month for 250GB.

Setup in Contabo

Create bucket and get credentials

First, you need to create a bucket. You can do it in the Contabo Object Storage panel.

Also, make your bucket public, so you can access it from your application.

Afterward, visit Account -> Security & Access; you will get the credentials like this:

Setup in Laravel

Install the package in Laravel

First, you need to install the package:

composer require league/flysystem-aws-s3-v3 "^3.0" --with-all-dependencies

In config/filesystems.php, modify the following code if you want, but I will keep it as the default:

's3' => [
    'driver' => 's3',
    'key' => env('AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID'),
    'secret' => env('AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY'),
    'region' => env('AWS_DEFAULT_REGION'),
    'bucket' => env('AWS_BUCKET'),
    'url' => env('AWS_URL'),
    'endpoint' => env('AWS_ENDPOINT'),
    'use_path_style_endpoint' => env('AWS_USE_PATH_STYLE_ENDPOINT', false),
    'throw' => false,
],

Configure the .env file using Contabo credentials

Please note that AWS_USE_PATH_STYLE_ENDPOINT must be set to true; otherwise, it will not work.

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=9ef6e69598c547336aa1d4004b2267ad
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=4ebf11e65e469b3a7b91e87cc169b27c
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=usc1
AWS_BUCKET=test
AWS_ENDPOINT=https://usc1.contabostorage.com # without the bucket name here, we'll use path style
AWS_URL=https://usc1.contabostorage.com/4069dd56f17142fbbbf34e43ce1902a0:test # the public url
AWS_USE_PATH_STYLE_ENDPOINT=true

That's it. Now you can use the Storage facade to upload your files to Contabo Object Storage. For example:

Storage::disk('s3')->put('test.txt', 'Hello World');

Conclusion

I think Contabo Object Storage is a good choice for S3-compatible storage. It's cheap and easy to use. If you have a tight budget like me, you can try it. 🚀