You can call this operation to query the metadata information of an object, which includes ETag, Size, and LastModified. The content of the object is not returned.

Note If the type of the object is a symbolic link, the information about the symbolic link is returned.

Versioning

By default, GetObjectMeta obtains the metadata of the current version of an object. If the current version of the object is a delete marker, OSS returns 404 Not Found. If you specify a version ID in the request, OSS returns the metadata of the object of the specified version.

Request structure

HEAD /ObjectName?objectMeta HTTP/1.1
Host: BucketName.oss-cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com
Date: GMT Date
Authorization: SignatureValue

Response headers

Header Type Description
Content-Length String

The size of the object.

ETag String

The ETag that is created to identify the content of the object when the object is created.

If an object is created by using a PutObject request, the ETag of the object is the MD5 hash of the object content. If an object is created by using another method, the ETag value is the universally unique identifier (UUID) of the object content. The ETag value of the object can be used to check whether the object content is modified. However, we recommend that you do not use the ETag of an object as the MD5 hash of the object to check data integrity.

Default value: null

Examples

  • Perform GetObjectMeta on an unversioned object
    Sample requests
    HEAD /oss.jpg?objectMeta HTTP/1.1
Host: oss-example.oss-cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2015 05:21:12 GMT
Authorization: OSS qn6qrrqxo2oawuk53otfjbyc:CTkuxpLAi4XZ+WwIfNm0Fmgb****
    Sample success responses when GetObjectMeta is performed on an object
    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
x-oss-request-id: 559CC9BDC755F95A6448****
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2015 05:21:12 GMT
ETag: "5B3C1A2E053D763E1B002CC607C5****"
Last-Modified: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 06:07:48 GMT
Content-Length: 344606
Connection: keep-alive
Server: AliyunOSS
    Sample success responses when GetObjectMeta is performed on a directory
    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
x-oss-request-id: 559CC9BDC755F95A6448****
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2021 05:21:12 GMT
ETag: "null"
Last-Modified: Tue, 30 Mar 2021 06:07:48 GMT
Content-Length: 0
Connection: keep-alive
Server: AliyunOSS
  • Perform GetObjectMeta on an unversioned object
    Sample requests
    GET /example?objectMeta&versionId=CAEQNRiBgIDMh4mD0BYiIDUzNDA4OGNmZjBjYTQ0YmI4Y2I4ZmVlYzJlNGVk**** HTTP/1.1
Host: versioning-test.oss-cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com
Date: Tue, 09 Apr 2019 06:24:00 GMT
Authorization: OSS 5n4nrhyqrcs6ngn:i/M/c36KzrOEA/bBSHLllIAt****
    Sample success responses 
    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
x-oss-version-id: CAEQNRiBgIDMh4mD0BYiIDUzNDA4OGNmZjBjYTQ0YmI4Y2I4ZmVlYzJlNGVk****
x-oss-request-id: 5CAC3A80B7AEADE0170005F6
Date: Tue, 09 Apr 2019 06:24:00 GMT
ETag: "1CF5A685959CA2ED8DE6E5F8ACC2****"
Last-Modified: Tue, 09 Apr 2019 06:24:00 GMT
Content-Length: 119914
Connection: keep-alive
Server: AliyunOSS

SDK

You can use OSS SDKs for the following programming languages to call the GetObjectMeta operation:

Error codes

Error code HTTP status code Description
Not Found 404 The error message returned because the specified object does not exist.