Remote submission guide

In addition to submissions of local contents via its command-line interface, Pocket archive supports submissions by remote upload. This is most likely the preferred method for both beginner and advanced users who don't run Pocket Archive locally or are not familiar with command-line tools: all operations are done by uploading and downloading files with a tool of their choice.

Watchdog service

The Watchdog setup page describes how to set up the service in a Pocket Archive instance. If you are not managing your own system, please consult your system administrator about availability and modes of operation.

Interaction with the drop box

The remote upload method relies on a drop box (i.e., a folder on a remote server) to be available for the user to upload contents. By uploading files with specific name patterns, Pocket Archive performs specific actions. The currently supported actions are:

Deposit

Deposit is triggered by dropping a laundry list file named pkar_submission*.csv into the drop box (* means zero or more additional characters).

Note that the file won't trigger an action if it is added to a sub-folder of the drop box. It only works at the top level.

When the laundry list is detected, the SIP is processed for submission. In order for this approach to work, the laundry list must be uploaded after all other submission files have been completely and successfully transferred.

Removal

If a file named pkar_remove*, containing a list of resource IDs, is dropped into the drop box, the resources listed in the files are removed. The IDs must be written one per line. They may or may not include the par: URI prefix.

As a special case, a file named pkar_remove_recursive* removes the listed resources and their members, recursively (members of members, etc.).

Note that a suffix is optional, and no file extension is required.

Presentation

If a file named pkar_gen_site* is dropped into the drop box, it triggers the (re-)generation of the presentation site from the current archive. The file can be empty: its contents are ignored.

Process completion

In all the previously described use cases, the original file is deleted from the drop box upon successful operation. This can be used to monitor long-running processes, which otherwise don't provide any other feedback to the user—except for the submission process, that creates a pkar_submission-<user-provided submission name>_report.json file for the submission report. Trigger files lingering for much longer than expected might indicate a failed operation and should be investigated.