Creating a Google Cloud Storage DAM

Last modified: August 15th, 2023

Adding a Digital Asset Manager (DAM) to your site enables you to store your images and other assets in an external service, separate from your content. DAMs improve site build times and allow you to reuse the same assets across different sites. With Google Cloud Storage you can host your own DAM while still managing your files directly from CloudCannon.

Create a project for your DAM#

Open the navigation menu (in the top left), and navigate to IAM and admin > Manage resources.

In the resources console, click the Create Project button in the top left.

Give your project a name and then click the Create.

Create your Google Cloud Storage bucket#

Open the navigation menu (in the top left), and navigate to Cloud Storage > Buckets.

Make sure your DAM project is selected in the projects drop-down (in the top left).

In the Cloud Storage console, click the Create button in the top menu bar.

Give your bucket a name and choose where you want it to be located, then click the Create button again, leaving the other settings unchanged. Note that your choice of location may affect response times from your bucket, so you should pick a location close to your users.

Open the *Permission *tab of your newly created bucket and click the Add button next to the Permissions heading.

Enter allUsers as the new principal** **and select Storage Object Viewer from the roles drop-down.

Click the Save button, and then click the Allow Public Access button on the popup.

Configure CORS for your bucket#

Download and install the gsutil command line tool by following the instructions in the Google Cloud Storage documentation.

Create a JSON file with the following contents:

cors.json
copied
[
  {
    "origin": ["https://www.example.com"],
    "responseHeader": ["Content-Type"],
    "method": ["GET"],
    "maxAgeSeconds": 3600
  },
  {
    "origin": ["https://app.cloudcannon.com"],
    "responseHeader": ["Content-Type"],
    "method": ["*"],
    "maxAgeSeconds": 3600
  }
]

The CloudCannon app needs to have access to your bucket so that you can upload images to it.

Replace https://www.example.com in the JSON file with a list of domains that you want to be able to access your DAM, then run the following command:

copied

gsutil cors set [path-to-your-json-file] gs://[your-bucket-name]

Create an IAM role#

Open the navigation menu (in the top left), and navigate to IAM and admin > Roles.

In the roles console, click the Create Role button in the top menu bar.

Give your role a title, description, and ID. Then set the role launch stage to General Availablity.

Click the Add Permissions button, and give your role the following permissions:

  • storage.buckets.get
  • storage.objects.create
  • storage.objects.delete
  • storage.objects.get
  • storage.objects.list

Click the Create button to finish creating your role.

Create a service account#

Open the navigation menu (in the top left), and navigate to IAM and admin > Service accounts.

In the service accounts console, click the **Create service account **button in the top menu bar.

Give your service account a name, and select your newly created role under the Grant this service account access to the project section.

Click the Done button to finish creating your service account.

Click on the service account and open the Keys tab. Then click on the Add Key button and select the Create new key option.

Select JSON as your key type, then click the Create button. Save the downloaded JSON file, you’ll need this to connect your DAM to CloudCannon.

Connecting your DAM to CloudCannon#

Open your site settings in CloudCannon. Navigate to Files / Assets. Under Link DAM, select New DAM.

Choose Google Cloud Storage as your DAM type and enter a name - this will be used to identify your DAM in CloudCannon.

Set Base URL to https://storage.googleapis.com/<your-bucket-name>/

Set Storage Bucket Name to the name of your bucket in Google Cloud Storage.

Set Credentials to the contents of your service account's JSON key.

Click Authenticate, to save and close the modal, then click Link DAM.

Extra options#

In your site settings, you can click the context menu on your linked DAM and select Settings to configure some extra site-level options.

The Extra Prefix option prepends a specified string to all asset paths when browsing and uploading assets. This is useful if you want to ensure that your site can only ever touch a specific folder in your DAM.

Open in a new tab