Filesystems Plugin

This plugin adds support for external filesystems (currently, AWS S3) as XNAT archive locations. Remote files can be added to XNAT catalogs via the API PUT xapi/remote_files/add_to_catalog as full URLs.

The plugin will also archive files to AWS S3 (provided you've activiated an AWS S3 bucket as an archiver for your project) after a configurable period of inaccess. "Archived" files can be pulled into the local XNAT archive individually on demand or in batch.

In a future version of this plugin, we are planning to add support for Box as an alternative to AWS S3 for an archival filesystem.

Instructions for activating the filesystems can be found in the XNAT webapp interface once the plugin has been added to your XNAT.

Dependencies

1. XNAT version 1.7.6
2. (for file archival only): Multi-node XNAT or at least your single Tomcat server with a ${xnat.home}/config/node-conf.properties file containing node.id=tomcat (the node id doesn't have to be tomcat, you can choose whatever you'd like).

Build

To build the filesystems plugin:

1. If you haven't already, clone this repository and cd into the newly cloned folder.
2. Build the plugin: ./gradlew fatJar (on Windows, you can use the batch file: gradlew.bat fatJar). This should build the plugin in the file build/libs/filesystems_plugin-${VERSION}-fat.jar
3. Copy the plugin jar to your plugins folder: cp build/libs/filesystems_plugin-${VERSION}-fat.jar ${xnat.home}/plugins/

Deploy

Once you've copied the plugin jar into your XNAT's plugins folder (and optionally, set any desired environment variables e.g., AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY), you'll need to restart the Tomcat server and any "shadow servers" (shadow servers are the multi-node XNAT servers that don't serve the webapp). The fileystems plugin will be available from the XNAT web application as soon as the restart and initialization processes complete.

Configure

• Navigate to Administer>Plugin Settings to set your preferences for the filesystems plugin
• Navigate to Administer>XNAT Task Settings if you configured a multi-node XNAT (or "faked it" by adding node-conf.properties to your Tomcat server)

Validate

• Configure per above
• Manually archive files for a configured project via the API POST xapi/remote_files/push (see swagger-ui for params). That API call will initiate the push or throw an exception. To determine when the push is complete, use use API GET xapi/remote_files/item_status AND/OR
• Add remote files to xnat via API PUT xapi/remote_files/add_to_catalog AND/OR
• Run a container with output files provided you have configured the project to upload container outputs to remote