Task Submission

1. Overview

Transfer and delete are asynchronous operations, and result in a background task being created. Both require a submission_id when submitted, and return a task_id on successful submission. The submission_id is used to safely re-submit in case of a network failure, and the task_id is used to monitor the progress of the task (see Task Monitoring API). The submission id and task id are not the same.

By default, before a transfer or delete task is submitted, the source (and destination for transfers) must be "activated" with user credentials, so the transfer service can perform operations on their behalf. See the Endpoint Activation API for details.

2. Document Types

2.1. Transfer and Delete Documents

The "transfer" and "delete" documents share several common fields and have similar structure. Both contain a submission id, an endpoint or endpoints to operate on, a list of options, and a list of paths. The key difference is that a transfer submission contains a pair of endpoints and a list of pairs of source destination paths, while a delete submission contains a single endpoint and a list of paths to delete. There are also several options that only make sense for one or the other, like encrypt_data which is only available for transfers.

2.1.1. Endpoint Format

Endpoints should be specified using the endpoint id, but for backward compatibility the endpoint canonical_name is also accepted. Using the canonical_name is deprecated, and will be removed in a future release. All new applications must use endpoint id, and old applications should be updated to use the id.

2.1.2. Path Format

Paths must use the path component separator forward slash (/), commonly used on Unix and Mac OSX, not backslash. This is true even if one of the endpoints happens to be a GridFTP server running on a windows machine, because the GridFTP protocol has standardized on forward slash.

2.2. Common Transfer and Delete fields

Field Name	JSON Type	Description
DATA_TYPE	string	Either "transfer" or "delete" to indicate the submission type.
submission_id	string	Id acquired from /submission_id.
label	string	Optional user specified string to help identify the task. The label is opaque; no specific form is required. The maximum length is 128 characters. The allowed characters are: ASCII upper and lower case letters The digits 0-9 space (" ") hypen ("-") underscore ("_") comma (",")
notify_on_succeeded	boolean	If true and the user has notification enabled, send a notification email when the transfer completes with status SUCCEEDED. Default true.
notify_on_failed	boolean	If true and the user has notification enabled, send a notification email when the transfer completes with status FAILED. Default true.
notify_on_inactive	boolean	If true and the user has notification enabled, send a notification email when the transfer enters status INACTIVE, e.g. from activation credentials expiring. Default true.
skip_activation_check	boolean	If true, allow task submission if the endpoint(s) aren’t currently activated. Default false.
deadline	string	ISO 8601 datetime string. If non-null, cancel the task if it’s not complete at the specified time. The default (null deadline) behavior for transfer tasks is to have a flexible deadline, which allows the task to continue indefinitely, as long as it is making progress. Delete tasks default to a deadline of 24 hours after submission.

2.3. Transfer specific fields

Field Name	JSON Type	Description
source_endpoint	string	Id of the endpoint to transfer data from.
destination_endpoint	string	Id of the endpoint to transfer data to.
DATA	list	One or more items to transfer. See Transfer Submission for details.
encrypt_data	boolean	If true, encrypt the data channel. Default false. If either the source or destination endpoint, or for shared endpoints the source or destination host endpoint, has force_encryption set, the data channel will be encrypted even if this is set to false.
sync_level	integer	If non-null, synchronize files, i.e. copy only files that are new or have been changed. The level must be an integer in the 0-3 range, and it controls what checks are performed to determine if a file should be copied. Higher levels include the checks from lower levels: 0 Copy files that do not exist at the destination. 1 Copy files if the size of the destination does not match the size of the source. 2 Copy files if the timestamp of the destination is older than the timestamp of the source. 3 Copy files if checksums of the source and destination do not match.
verify_checksum	boolean	After transfer, verify that the source and destination file checksums match. If they don’t, re-transfer the entire file and keep trying until it succeeds. Default false.
preserve_timestamp	boolean	Preserve modification time of files and symlinks. Default false. Directory times are not preserved because filesystems typically override them.
delete_destination_extra	boolean	Delete files, directories, and symlinks on the destination endpoint which don’t exist on the source endpoint or are a different type. Only applies for recursive directory transfers. Default: false.
recursive_symlinks	string	How to process symbolic links (symlinks) found in the contents of recursive directory transfer_items. The default is "ignore". Valid values are: ignore Symlinks in the source directory are ignored. If delete_destination_extra is true, all symlinks in the destination directory are removed, because they are presumed not to exist on the source. keep Symlinks in the source directory are created as symlinks in the destination directory. The symlink target path name is preserved identically; there is no conversion between absolute or relative paths, or chroot paths. copy Symlinks in the source directory are followed (subject to permissions) and created as files or directories in the destination directory. The task will fail if any symlink in the source directory is invalid (no permission to the target, or the target does not exist). If delete_destination_extra is true, all symlinks in the destination directory are removed.
perf_cc, perf_p, perf_pp	integer	If non-null, a hint for what concurrency, parallelism, and pipelining value to use for the task. (experimental)
perf_udt	boolean	If true, use the UDT transfer protocol. (experimental)

2.4. transfer_item

Field Name	JSON Type	Description
DATA_TYPE	string	Always the value "transfer_item"
source_path	string	Source path of file or directory
destination_path	string	Destination path of file or directory
recursive	boolean	Must be true for directory paths, false for files.
external_checksum	string	Checksum for validating the integrity of the source file. Assumed to be MD5 unless checksum_algorithm is set. Cannot be used for directories.
checksum_algorithm	string	Algorithm to be used for checksum validation of this transfer_item. Accepts arbitrary strings as algorithms, but a string that does not match an algorithm supported by both endpoints will cause the task to fail at submission or execution.

2.5. transfer_symlink_item

Field Name	JSON Type	Description
DATA_TYPE	string	Always the value "transfer_symlink_item"
source_path	string	Source path of symlink to keep
destination_path	string	Destination path of symlink

2.6. Delete specific fields

Field Name	JSON Type	Description
endpoint	string	Id of the endpoint to delete data on.
DATA	list	List of delete_item documents containing paths to delete. Note that unlike transfer tasks, directories do not need to end with ("/"). File or directory symlinks are deleted and never followed.
recursive	boolean	Delete directory contents recursively. Required if any delete_item (or any path matched by globbing) is a directory. Symlinks found during recursive expansion are deleted and never followed. Note that unlike transfer submissions, this is a top level field and can’t be specified per item. Default false.
ignore_missing	boolean	Don’t generate errors for non existent files and directories. Default false.
interpret_globs	boolean	If false (the default), every character in the entire path is treated literally. If true, shell glob characters (*, ?, [, and ]) in the last path component are interpreted as a pattern, unless they are escaped by a preceding backslash (\). For consistency, the rest of the path (e.g. everything but the final component) also has any backslash escapes removed, so a literal backslash anywhere in the path must be escaped. Like UNIX, glob characters will not match files or directories that start with a period (.); a literal period character is required in such cases. The special directory entries . and .. are never matched. The second-to-last path component must be a directory (or symlink-to-directory, in which case it is followed). Symlinks found during glob expansion are deleted and never followed.

2.7. delete_item

Field Name	JSON Type	Description
DATA_TYPE	string	Always has value "delete_item" to indicate this document type.
path	string	Path of file or directory to delete.

3. Operations

3.1. Get a submission id

Get a submission id, required when submitting transfer and delete tasks. Note that this is different than the task id returned by the submit operations.

URL	/submission_id
Method	GET
Response Body	`{ "value": "55379aa2-d9a2-11e5-976c-22000b9da45e", "DATA_TYPE": "submission_id" }`

3.2. Submit a transfer task

The transfer submission document contains task-level options and one or more items to transfer in the "DATA" field. This API is relatively low-level and explicit, but allows renaming and is idempotent. There are three types of items:

3.2.1. Recursive Directory

To copy a directory, use a transfer_item with the recursive option set to True. The source_path must be a directory or symlink-to-directory. The source_path and destination_path may or may not end with slash ("/"); both forms are equivalent. A trailing slash will be automatically added if it is not present.

The contents of source_path are placed inside destination_path on the destination endpoint. The destination_path directory and all its parent subdirectories are created automatically. The recursive_symlinks option determines what happens to symlinks found in the contents of source_path. The delete_destination_extra option may be used to provide "mirroring".

3.2.2. File

To copy a file, use a transfer_item with the recursive option set to False. The source_path and destination_path must not end with slash ("/"). The source_path must be a file or symlink-to-file.

The file at source_path is copied to destination_path. The destination_path is the full path of the destination file, and all parent directories are created automatically.

3.2.3. Symlink

To keep a specific symlink (keep the symlink itself, and not dereference its target), use a transfer_symlink_item. The source_path and destination_path must not end with slash ("/"). The source_path must be a symlink of any type (file, directory, or invalid).

The symlink at source_path is duplicated at destination_path (the target is not dereferenced or copied). The destination_path is the full path of the destination symlink, and all parent directories are created automatically. The symlink target path name is preserved identically; there is no conversion between absolute or relative paths, or chroot paths.

URL	/transfer
Method	POST
Request Body	Transfer document
Response Body	`{ "DATA_TYPE": "transfer_result", "task_id": "994f289b-d9a2-11e5-976c-22000b9da45e", "submission_id": "f5cc79fd-dfc8-475e-b726-b96c734a484d", "code": "Accepted", "message": "The task was submitted successfully", "resource": "/transfer", "request_id": "ABCdef789" }`

3.2.4. Result codes

Code	HTTP Status	Description
Accepted	202	The transfer or delete submission has been accepted and a task has been created and queued for execution
Duplicate	200	A transfer or delete submission with the same submission id has already been accepted. In case of a network error, the client may not know whether the submission was successful, and won’t know the task id if it was successful. If the client re-submits and gets this code, it means the initial request was successful, and the task id in the response can be used. If this is received on a request that is not a retry, the client is likely not getting a submission id correctly for each submission.

3.2.5. Errors

Code	HTTP Status	Description
ClientError.BadRequest or BadRequest	400	There is some problem in the request document, see the message for details.
PermissionDenied	403	The user does not have permission to use one of the endpoints in the request.
ServiceUnavailable	503	The service is down for maintenance.
NoCredException	409	One or more endpoints in the request are not activated or have expired activation. Activate the affected endpoint(s) and retry the operation.
Conflict	409	The source or destination endpoint in the request is a shared endpoint and its host endpoint has been deleted.

3.3. Submit a delete task

Response and error codes are the same as for transfer submission.

URL	/delete
Method	POST
Request Body	Delete document
Response Body	`{ "DATA_TYPE": "delete_result", "task_id": "cfec1219-3f78-4c02-8fe6-83d5ba01f3a2", "submission_id": "499f18bf-9ea6-48e6-a030-98e0f29512b5", "code": "Accepted", "message": "The task was submitted successfully", "resource": "/delete", "request_id": "ABCdef789" }`

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