How to change http response code on an object in Amazon S3

Question

I have a webpage hosted on Amazon S3 but I don't want the http response code to be 200. The page is a maintenance page that I'll redirect traffic to when I take our main website down for maintenance.

I want the Amazon S3 page to include a response header of:

HTTP/1.1 503 Service unavailable

Amazon give the ability to add some metadata to the S3 Object but there is nothing for the http status code.

Is it possible?

Hi Tom. Have you managed to find a solution for this? – WooDzu Sep 18 '15 at 12:30 — WooDzu, Sep 18 '15 at 12:30

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 09 '17 at 15:13

4

Not sure which browsers, or crawlers, that supports this. But you could potentially use the meta http-equiv status meta tag to accomplish this.

<meta http-equiv="status" content="503 Service Unavailable" />

The specification says to treat it in the same way as if 503 had been sent as the status code.

answered Nov 09 '17 at 15:13

Linus Unnebäck

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Um, I don't get the impression *anything* at all is using `http-equiv="status"`. Any evidence to the contrary most welcome. – mlissner Jul 18 '22 at 23:40

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 19 '14 at 14:40

2

I believe you can get Cloudfront to do this. I haven't tested it yet, but try this:

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/custom-error-pages.html

answered Jun 19 '14 at 14:40

pcormier

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You can only customize status codes when implementing a custom error page. At this time, custom error pages can only be made for a handful of predefined status codes >400 – Steve Buzonas Feb 04 '18 at 09:06

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 04 '18 at 09:22

1

You cannot customize the status code for S3 responses.

You can use API Gateway as a proxy to your S3 website error page where you can customize status codes returned.

answered Feb 04 '18 at 09:22

Steve Buzonas

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Is this actually possible? I'm not seeing anywhere in the API Gateway UI to change the HTTP status code returned by the proxied site. – ksenzee Apr 24 '21 at 00:30
@ksenzee https://docs.aws.amazon.com/apigateway/latest/developerguide/apigateway-override-request-response-parameters.html – Steve Buzonas Apr 24 '21 at 00:44
It's done through the mapping, and may need some magic in the velocity template – Steve Buzonas Apr 24 '21 at 00:50

score -1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 18 '15 at 12:50

Until Amazon allow a custom status code from S3, here is a workaround using nginx.

We watch for the existence of a specific file, that acts as a "ON switch" for maintenance mode. If found, we proxy_pass requests to S3 - The trick is to return 503 but redirect processing of 503 status codes to a nginx "named location".

Example nginx conf file (just the relevant bits shown):

server {

    ...

    # Redirect processing of 503 status codes to a nginx "named location".
    error_page 503 @maintenance;

    # "Maintenance Mode" is off by default - Use a nginx variable to track state.
    set $maintenance off;

    # Switch on "Maintenance Mode" if a certain file exists.
    if (-f /var/www/app/maintenanceON) {
        set $maintenance on;
    }

    if ($maintenance = on) {
        # For Maintenance mode Google recommend using status code: "503 Service unavailable".
        return 503;
    }

    ...

    location @maintenance {
        # Redirect the request to a static maintenance page hosted in Amazon S3.
        # Note: Use proxy_pass instead of rewrite so we keep the 503 code (otherwise nginx serves a 302 code)
        rewrite ^(.*)$ /index.html break;
        proxy_pass http://bucketname.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com;
    }
}

While this is technically a solution to missing functionality, is it really worth paying $5 or more for degraded availability to correct a status code for a website that may cost less than $0.05/month for the whole website? — Steve Buzonas, Feb 04 '18 at 09:13
For us it is. Our website costs $15k per month to run, so taking the time to ensure we have a maintenance website hosted in S3 with the correct status code is worth the effort. — Tom, Feb 05 '18 at 19:30
I don't disagree that having the proper status code is preferred. My point is, the question title is "How to change http response code on an object in Amazon S3"; setting up a host to fix the status code for a S3 website object is an astronomical price increase compared to the cost of hosting the object on S3. — Steve Buzonas, Feb 06 '18 at 23:13
I'm glad you found an acceptable solution to your scenario but I have the exact same question and this isn't an answer for me. — Liz Av, Jul 02 '20 at 15:31

How to change http response code on an object in Amazon S3

4 Answers4