9. Testing¶

A chapter about how to test the plugin, and how to test your own integration with it.

The plugin's automated tests¶

The plugin ships with a test suite in the S3CompatibleStorageTests module. The module has type DeveloperTool: it builds for the editor and for Development configurations, and never ends up in a Shipping build.

Running from the editor¶

Window → Test Automation, filter S3.

Running from the command line¶

UnrealEditor-Cmd YourProject.uproject \
  -ExecCmds="Automation RunTests S3.;Quit" \
  -unattended -nopause -nullrhi -abslog=/tmp/s3tests.log

Narrow the filter to run less: Automation RunTests S3.SigV4.

If the project's path contains a space, pass it as a plain, shell-quoted positional argument. Don't add quotes inside the argument itself — the engine re-quotes arguments on its own, and doubled quotes make the project fail to open at all, with the run reporting "No automation tests matched."

What the tests cover¶

94 offline tests, no network, fully deterministic:

Group	About
`S3.Crypto.*`	SHA-256 and HMAC against published test vectors
`S3.SigV4.*`	Signature construction against an independent implementation of the same spec
`S3.UriEncode.*`	RFC 3986 encoding, including characters outside the basic plane
`S3.RequestBuilder.*`	Address construction, both addressing styles, encoding exactly once
`S3.Xml.*`	Response parsing, entities, namespaces
`S3.Headers.*`	ETag, Content-Range, user metadata
`S3.Result.`, `S3.Diagnostics.`	Error classification and diagnostic hints
`S3.Retry.*`	The retry schedule, and what does and doesn't get retried
`S3.Credentials.*`	Providers, the chain, key refresh, the encrypted store, when a key gets discarded after a failure and when it doesn't
`S3.Config.*`	Provider presets, endpoint computation, transfer-parameter sanitization
`S3.LocalPath.*`	Expanding a relative `Local File Path` against the project root
`S3.Download.`, `S3.ChunkedDownload.`	Downloading to a file, retries, byte-by-byte progress, assembling ranges
`S3.Multipart.`, `S3.Cancel.`	Multipart upload: every part exactly once, correct behavior when a part fails, cancellation — including a genuine DELETE abort at the provider, not just a silent stop
`S3.ResumeUpload.*`	Resuming an interrupted upload: skipping already-sent parts, refusing to resume a changed file
`S3.ResumeDownload.*`	Resuming an interrupted download: continuing from `.s3part` instead of pulling again, restarting on a changed object, refusing to stitch two versions together — including when the provider ignores `If-Match` or returns the whole object instead of a range
`S3.BatchDelete.*`	Splitting into batches of 1000 keys, partial failures, an empty list
`S3.Copy.*`	Encoding the source in `x-amz-copy-source`, a late failure in a 200-status response body
`S3.DeleteBucket.*`	Deletion is addressed to the bucket itself, not a key in it; a non-empty bucket is rejected with `BucketNotEmpty` and a hint about what to do next
`S3.Tags.`, `S3.Lifecycle.`	Object tags and lifecycle rules: reading, writing, "no rules" isn't an error
`S3.TextBytes.*`	`String To UTF-8 Bytes` / `UTF-8 Bytes To String`
`S3.Profile.*`	`S3 Storage Profile`: configuration construction, credential source, editor keys
`S3.Subsystem.*`	The subsystem's caching of named clients
`S3.Live.*`	An end-to-end cycle against a real service — see below

End-to-end tests against a real service¶

The S3.Live.* group is skipped and counted as passing if no environment variables are set — so a normal run stays offline and fast.

export S3_TEST_PROVIDER=MinIO
export S3_TEST_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:9000
export S3_TEST_BUCKET=my-test-bucket
export S3_TEST_ACCESS_KEY=...
export S3_TEST_SECRET_KEY=...
export S3_TEST_REGION=us-east-1          # optional

UnrealEditor-Cmd YourProject.uproject \
  -ExecCmds="Automation RunTests S3.Live;Quit" \
  -unattended -nopause -nullrhi

Credentials are read only from environment variables: they're not in the plugin's repository, and can't be.

Nine tests. Eight run against the same bucket (S3_TEST_BUCKET); CreateAndDeleteBucket runs against its own, created and deleted specifically for this test, so it needs account-level permission to create and delete buckets, not just permission on one bucket:

Test	What it checks
`S3.Live.RoundTrip`	Write, read, metadata, a range request, listing and batch deletion — with a key containing a space, an ampersand, Cyrillic and a plus sign. A key like that is exactly what surfaces URL-encoding and XML-entity bugs that an offline test can't prove
`S3.Live.MultipartUploadRoundTrip`	A file larger than the part threshold genuinely goes out as several `UploadPart` calls, not one `PutObject`
`S3.Live.MultipartCancelAbortsAtProvider`	Cancelling mid-upload genuinely sends `AbortMultipartUpload` and leaves no parts at the provider
`S3.Live.CopyObjectRoundTrip`	Server-side copy
`S3.Live.TagsRoundTrip`	Tags: write, read, delete
`S3.Live.BucketLifecycleRoundTrip`	Lifecycle rules: write, read, delete
`S3.Live.PresignedUrlRoundTrip`	A presigned URL that genuinely works for an ordinary HTTP client with no knowledge of the plugin's signature
`S3.Live.ResumeInterruptedDownload`	Resuming a download against a real provider — and that a rewritten object forces a restart from scratch instead of an old tail getting a new head stitched onto it. An offline test can't prove this: it checks the code against a fake that already agrees with it, whereas `If-Match` on a ranged `GET` is something each of the six providers implements on its own
`S3.Live.CreateAndDeleteBucket`	Creating a bucket, deleting an empty one, refusing to delete a non-empty one with `BucketNotEmpty` and a clear hint, deleting after emptying it

S3.Live.BucketLifecycleRoundTrip replaces the bucket's entire rule set, and deletes it entirely at the end — exactly the way Set Bucket Lifecycle / Delete Bucket Lifecycle are supposed to behave. Don't run this test against a bucket that already has lifecycle rules you need.

S3.Live.CreateAndDeleteBucket genuinely creates and deletes a bucket in your account. On a provider with a scoped key (a B2 application key limited to one bucket, say), the test fails at S3 Create Bucket with 403 AccessDenied — that's about the key's permissions, not the plugin. On Wasabi, the account can additionally block the deletion step itself through the "Security Contacts" security feature, even for a freshly-created empty bucket — see 8. Providers → Wasabi. In either case, a bucket created earlier may be left in the account and need manual cleanup.

Not every test cleans up after itself: S3.Live.RoundTrip deletes everything it created, even when a step in the middle fails, while the rest deliberately leave a few small objects under the ue-plugin-tests/ prefix — so the result can be inspected in the provider's console. That's convenient for a one-off check; for a regular CI run, either sweep that prefix as a separate step, or just accept that the bucket accumulates test debris over time.

Live testing in your own project¶

S3.Live.* isn't only for developing the plugin itself. It's the fastest way to prove to yourself that the plugin genuinely works with your own provider, account and bucket — before you rely on it in your game. You almost certainly have a different endpoint, different keys and a different access policy than any environment the plugin's authors verified against.

The mechanism is the same: the environment variables from the table above, pointed at your service instead of MinIO. The S3CompatibleStorageTests module ships with the plugin's full source, so there's nothing extra to install.

Step by step¶

If you haven't done this before — it all happens in one terminal window, one step right after the other.

1. Open a terminal. macOS: Cmd + Space, type "Terminal". Windows: "Start" → "PowerShell".

2. Set the environment variables — paste and press Enter. They only apply in this window: close it, and you'll have to enter them again.

export S3_TEST_PROVIDER=MinIO
export S3_TEST_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:9000
export S3_TEST_BUCKET=my-test-bucket
export S3_TEST_ACCESS_KEY=...
export S3_TEST_SECRET_KEY=...
export S3_TEST_REGION=us-east-1

Windows PowerShell syntax is different — each line becomes $env:S3_TEST_PROVIDER = "MinIO".

3. In the same window, run the tests, substituting your engine's real path to UnrealEditor-Cmd and your project's real .uproject path:

"/path/to/Engine/Binaries/Mac/UnrealEditor-Cmd" \
  "/path/to/YourProject.uproject" \
  -ExecCmds="Automation RunTests S3.Live;Quit" \
  -unattended -nopause -nullrhi -abslog=/tmp/s3livetests.log

This takes seconds to minutes, depending on how many tests are in the S3.Live group and how quickly your provider responds.

4. Read the result. The terminal itself scrolls past a lot of engine boilerplate, so it's easiest to filter it:

grep -E "Test Completed|LogDemoS3:" /tmp/s3livetests.log

Or open the whole file: cat /tmp/s3livetests.log, or by eye through Finder — Cmd + Shift + G, type /tmp (a hidden folder by default, not reachable by a plain double click).

/tmp isn't guaranteed to survive a machine reboot. If you need the log around for a while, point -abslog at your home folder instead of /tmp, e.g. -abslog=/Users/you/Desktop/s3livetests.log.

A few practical tips:

Use a disposable or test bucket, not the one holding real data. The tests write, read and delete objects for real — against an actual account, not a simulation.
The keys need permission for whatever you're checking. A read-only key won't pass S3.Live.RoundTrip at all; a key without PutBucketLifecycleConfiguration won't pass S3.Live.BucketLifecycleRoundTrip, even though the rest of the tests do. This isn't a plugin failure — it's exactly what the check was meant to show: whether you have the permissions for what you're planning to do.
Narrow the filter if you don't need the whole set: Automation RunTests S3.Live.RoundTrip runs just the basic cycle, without multipart upload, tags or lifecycle rules.
Cloudflare R2 doesn't implement ListBuckets, and some providers don't support multipart-upload cancellation the expected way either — if one test fails and the rest are green, check the error message: Diagnostic Hint works there the same way it does on an ordinary operation's result.

Testing your own integration¶

The fastest way¶

Project Settings → Plugins → S3 Compatible Storage → Run Round Trip Check.

Write, read, byte verification and deletion — with the exact same code the packaged game will use. If this button is green, the configuration works.

Worth checking in your own project¶

Scenario	Why
A file larger than `Multipart Part Size Bytes`	The multipart path differs from the plain one
Cancelling mid-transfer	Make sure the UI rolls back correctly
A wrong key or bucket	See what your code shows the user on failure
A dropped connection mid-transfer	Turn off Wi-Fi halfway through a large upload
A key containing spaces and non-Latin characters	If object names come from user input

The last one is worth checking without fail if keys are built from user-entered names: encoding bugs don't show up right away and look like "the signature doesn't match," which sends the search in entirely the wrong direction.

Swapping the transport in your own tests¶

If you're writing automated tests for your own code and don't want them hitting the network, swap the client's transport:

Client->SetHttpTransport(MyFakeTransport);

Implementing IDemoS3HttpTransport — a single method — is enough. From then on, your code runs through the plugin, and you supply the responses yourself.

Logs for troubleshooting¶

Log LogDemoS3 Verbose       // one line per request
Log LogDemoS3 VeryVerbose   // plus every signed header

The secret never makes it into the logs, at any verbosity.

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Next: 10. Deployment Scenarios