FILE MANAGEMENT

In this section we describe how to upload, download and convert files.

File types and supported formats

We support data conversion from several open and proprietary formats, available in the domain of neuroscience (feature is not available at the demo server). If you upload a file of the supported format, you may request to extract data from it further to be able to directly access your experimental data and metadata or export and download it in different format. We do support data extraction from ZIP/TAR archives too. Here is the list of supported formats:

Format	Type	Comments
neuroshare*	1	Neuroshare compatible. Extracted into ePhys Objects
NEO I/O*	2	compatible with NEO I/O. Extracted into ePhys Objects
ascii-csv	3	a csv file where every line represents a signal as comma-separated floats. Extracted into AnalogSignal objects
odML*	4	compatible with odML. Extracts odML structure and creates the same metadata structure in the root of the metadata tree
HDF5	5	a file should have an array in the root (“/”). Can be used with any data-containing object as a corresponding data array.
ZIP	6	ZIP archive. Extracted folders are replicated as metadata Section objects containing original files from the archive.
TAR	7	TAR archive. Extracted folders are replicated as metadata Section objects containing original files from the archive.

Note. Conversion from types marked with asterisk are in development.

Getting list of datafiles

Request: GET /datafiles/?params

Typically you should get the following response:

Response: HTTP SUCCESS (200)

{
"logged_in_as": "bob",
"objects_selected": 2,
"selected": [
    {
    "fields": {
        "last_task_id": "2a3c89f4-9328-46aa-801e-b7bf88740f8f",
        "title": "ascii_csv.txt",
        "extracted_info": null,
        "tags": "",
        "current_state": 10,
        "operations_log": "python-neuroshare: failure ascii-csv: success ",
        "conversion_type": 3,
        "caption": "",
        "last_modified": "2012-03-14 17:27:08",
        "safety_level": 3,
        "date_created": "2012-03-14 17:27:08"
    },
    "model": "datafiles.datafile",
    "permalink": "/datafiles/9"
    },
    {
    "fields": {
        "last_task_id": "7c260cfa-2395-40b7-907e-065088f41498",
        "title": "ascii_csv.txt",
        "extracted_info": null,
        "tags": "",
        "current_state": 10,
        "operations_log": "python-neuroshare: failure ascii-csv: success ... ",
        "conversion_type": 3,
        "caption": "",
        "last_modified": "2012-03-15 10:27:45",
        "safety_level": 3,
        "date_created": "2012-03-14 17:29:21"
    },
    "model": "datafiles.datafile",
    "permalink": "/datafiles/10"
    }
],
"message": "Here is the list of requested objects.",
"selected_range": [0, 1],
"message_type": "object_selected"
}

Getting single file details

Requesting information about a single file is like a normal single object request:

Request: GET /datafiles/<datafile_id>

See the response example above; it’s very similar.

Upload a datafile (with or without conversion)

Request: POST /datafiles/?params

the file should be sent with "raw_file" key.

parameters:

• [section_id] - provide an ID of the section in which to store the file (recommended).
• [convert] - 1 (default), 0 - whether try to convert the file into native format, if possible. See the supported file types in this table.

Note. If the file is uploaded into a specific section, the security settings for the new file will be assigned as for the parent section. When no section is specified, the file is private by default.

Note. For bulk file upload consider this description in the overview.

Modify datafile attributes, move file to the Section

Request: POST /datafiles/<datafile_id>/?params

{
    "caption": "Some REAL description goes here..",
    "section": 1236,
}

Note. ACL for the file is not changed when moved to a different section.

Datafile conversion

The following request

Request: GET /datafiles/<datafile_id>/convert/

initiates file conversion.

Note. The conversion operation is asynchronous, which means you’ll not see the status of the conversion immediately in the response. You may use a normal :ref:`details request <getting_single_file>` to check whether the file was converted successfully and see log for details.

Download datafile

When the file is not converted, you may get the originally uploaded file. When file is in native format, it can convert all underlying data into a file with the format specified and return it for download.

Request: GET /datafiles/<datafile_id>/download/?params

Delete datafile

Request: DELETE /datafiles/<datafile_id>/?params

in addition to the usual filters, use can use the following parameters:

• [force] - true, false (default) - use “true” to delete the file even if there are other users with access to the file. If “false” or omitted, the file will not be deleted being in the state having collaborators.