Support long-running background operations

[nick3389]

Hello,

I want to migrate the old aws-ios-sdk to the Amplify SDK, as the former has been declared as legacy code despite the updates and bug fixes. Therefore, I would like to ask if static credentials are supported in this sdk to upload files to S3. in my current implementation I use static credentials along with Transfer utility as follows:

`let staticCredentialsProvider = AWSStaticCredentialsProvider(accessKey: accessKey, secretKey: secretKey)
let s3Utility = AWSS3TransferUtilityConfiguration()
s3Utility.timeoutIntervalForResource = 50 * 60 * 24 * 7

let wifiTU = AWSS3TransferUtility.s3TransferUtility(forKey: "custom_key")
let wifiConfiguration = AWSServiceConfiguration(region: region, credentialsProvider: staticCredentialsProvider)
wifiConfiguration?.allowsCellularAccess = false

AWSS3TransferUtility.register(with: wifiConfiguration!, transferUtilityConfiguration: s3Utility, forKey: "custom_key")`

Will I be able to have a similar setup with Amplify?

Thanks.

[wooj2]

Using AWSStaticCredentialsProvider w/ passing in an access key and secret key in your application is not recommended. These credentials can easily be extracted from your application by extracting the binary and running a simple strings command against the compiled binary. I believe it was only added for test purposes, so just to be super clear: we highly recommend you avoid using this for production use cases.

Could you tell us a little bit more about your use case? We may be able to recommend an approach with using the Amplify Libraries?

[nick3389]

@wooj2 Actually the case is that regularly we upload files to S3. The example that I gave you in my initial post is the actual implementation I use, so there is nothing more to say here. The most important note here is that we depend on uploading the files while the app is in the background. So, background task support is necessary for us. Please free to suggest any different approach.

[wooj2]

HI @nick3389,

Unfortunately, a static credentials provider is not available for Amplify storage. But as you've noted, what's important is that we will need to add support for long standing uploads that happen while the app is in the background.

Thanks for calling this out, and I will be marking this as a feature request/enhancement.

[nick3389]

@wooj2 Are static credentials going to be supported in future releases of amplify?

[wooj2]

Hi @nick3389

I can not promise anything, but I believe that supporting long standing uploads that happen while the app is in the background is an important use case for our customers., Unfortunately, I'm unable to comment whether or not we would be using static credentials to support that. That being said, I would imagine that if there was another way to support long standing uploads while the app is in the background without static credentials, we would try going down that route, but I'm not aware of anyone on the team who has done this investigation.

[nick3389]

Hey @wooj2 !

I think setting up a AWSServiceConfiguration with a credentials provider that conforms to AWSCredentialsProvider as AWSStaticCredentialsProvider does in the aws-ios-sdk is irrelevant of whether a service like AWSS3TransferUtility supports uploads/downloads in the background. I am sorry if my question was misinterpreted, but I wanted to ask whether static credentials will be another way to setup a service configuration object or generally use it as a setup to be able to upload/download files to S3...

[palpatim]

I'm changing the title of this issue so it more accurately reflects the use case we're trying to support with the feature request, and hopefully avoids an XY problem. Static credentials may be the only way to accomplish this, but what we really want to support is long-running background transfers.

[rromanchuk]

I want to migrate the old aws-ios-sdk to the Amplify SDK, as the former has been declared as legacy code despite the updates and bug fixes.

@nick3389 can you share with me where you read that? Or do you just mean it "feels" that way?

[nick3389]

@rromanchuk Sorry for the delay. You can read it here at the bottom.

[brennanMKE]

@nick3389 Would you like to file a feature request so we can collect the necessary details and close this issue?

[nick3389]

@brennanMKE Just submitted #1559

[brennanMKE]

@nick3389 Thanks, I will raise the feature request with the team.