Folders and Deletion

Objects inside a data container are organized into folders. Any data object or folder can be attached into another folder. Cycles are prohibited, and objects can be in at most one folder. By convention, the "root" folder of a container has path equal to "/" and cannot be moved, cloned or removed. This is the default destination folder of any created objects in the data container. Folders can be created in any existing folder and must have a name that is a UTF-8 string that contains at least one character, is not equal to "." or "..", and does not match the regular expression [\x00-\x1F]. Thus in full folder paths, consecutive characters of "/" will be interpreted as a single character "/", and trailing characters of "/" will be ignored. Folders can be renamed, moved, and removed.

Deletion of Data

When data objects are removed, removal is propagated to hidden linked objects that are no longer reachable from some other visible object (also in the data container) via one or more links. (For a full description of details, links and visibility, see Details and Links and Visibility. The objects removed can be in any state. Removal of open objects may have additional consequences such as invalidating URLs provided for uploading data. Removal of objects can occur using either the /class-xxxx/removeFolder or the /class-xxxx/removeObjects API methods.

API Methods

API method: /class-xxxx/newFolder

Specification

Creates a new folder in the data container using the given route.

Inputs

• folder string The new folder to be created in the data container

• parents boolean (optional, default false) Whether the parent

  folders should be created if they do not exist

Outputs

• id string ID of the manipulated data container

Errors

• InvalidInput (the input is not a hash, or folder is missing or is not a nonempty string starting with "/", or parents is present but is not a boolean)

• ResourceNotFound (the specified data container does not exist, or parents is false but the parent folder of the folder specified in folder does not yet exist)

• InvalidState (a folder with the given route already exists and parents was not set to true)

• PermissionDenied (UPLOAD access required)

API method: /class-xxxx/renameFolder

Specification

Renames a current folder in the data container with the given name.

Inputs

• folder string Folder to be renamed

• name string The new basename of the folder (to replace the

  string after the last "/" in folder)

Outputs

• id string ID of the manipulated data container

Errors

• InvalidInput (the input is not a hash, or folder is missing or is not a nonempty string starting with "/", folder is "/", name is missing or is not a nonempty string with no "/")

• ResourceNotFound (the specified data container does not exist, or the specified folder does not exist)

• InvalidState (a folder with the given route already exists)

• PermissionDenied (CONTRIBUTE access required)

API method: /class-xxxx/listFolder

Specification

Lists the contents of a given data container's folder. Only folders or only objects can be specified to be returned, though this method returns both folders and objects by default. This method will not return hidden objects unless includeHidden is set to true.

Inputs

• folder string (optional, default "/") The folder to be listed

• describe boolean or mapping (optional, default false) False indicates that no extra metadata should be retrieved with the data object results. A mapping represents the input that would be used for calling the result's corresponding describe method; the value true is equivalent to the empty hash input.

• only string (optional, default "all") Indicate what type of contents to return; one of the values "folders", "objects", or "all"

• includeHidden boolean (optional, default false) Whether hidden objects should be returned in objects; applicable only if only is set to "objects" or "all".

• hasSubfolderFlags boolean (optional, default false) Indicate whether a folder has subfolders

Outputs

• objects array of mappings List of metadata for all data objects in the specified folder, each with the key/values:

  • id string The object ID

  If describe was set to true or a mapping:

  • describe mapping The output of the result's corresponding describe method

• folders array of strings or array of arrays By default, this is a list of all folders directly under the specified folder. If the 'hasSubfolderFlags' input is set to true, the array will contain arrays of exactly two elements where the first element is a string of the folder name and the second element is a boolean that is set to true if the folder has subfolders and false otherwise.

Errors

• InvalidInput (the input is not a hash; folder is not a nonempty

  string starting with "/"; only is given but is not one of

  "folders", "objects", and "all"; includeHidden is present but is

  not a boolean)

• ResourceNotFound (the specified data container does not exist or a folder with the given route does not exist)

• PermissionDenied (VIEW access required)

API method: /class-xxxx/removeFolder

Specification

Removes the given folder in the data container using the given route. The folder must contain no visible data objects in order to be removed unless recurse is set to true. Note that removing the root folder "/" with recurse set to true removes ALL of the contents in the data container. Setting recurse to true should be used carefully to prevent accidental deletion of data. Removing a folder removes all of the visible objects contained in it and all of their orphaned hidden links. Any remaining hidden objects that are not removed by this process are placed in the root folder. In particular, if recurse is false and the folder to be removed only contains hidden objects, then these objects are similarly placed in the root folder, and the specified folder folder is removed.

There is a limit to how many objects may be removed in one API call of 10,000 data objects regardless of visibility. If a folder's contents goes above this threshold, one can set partial to true to allow for a partial removal of the folder's contents up to this limit. A completed flag will then be set in the output to indicate whether or not the folder was completely removed. If completed is set to false, reissue the api call with the partial flag in order to continue removing the folder.

Inputs

• folder string The folder to be removed from the data container

• recurse boolean (optional, default false) Whether removal should

  propagate to its contained folders and objects

• force boolean (optional, default false) If true, this operation should

  not throw an error even if the given folder does not exist

• partial boolean (optional, default false) If true, this operation will

  attempt to remove objects from the folder even if the folder contains more

  objects than can be deleted at one time.

Outputs

• id string ID of the manipulated data container

  If partial was set to true:

• completed boolean True if all objects, subfolders, and the specified

  folder have been removed. False if there are still objects remaining indicating

  the user should reissue the call to further progress.

Errors

• InvalidInput (the input is not a hash, folder is missing, folder is not set to a nonempty string starting with "/", folder is set to "/" but recurse is not specified or is false, recurse is provided and is not a boolean)

• ResourceNotFound

  • The specified data container does not exist

  • A folder with the given route does not exist and force was not set to true

• PermissionDenied (CONTRIBUTE access required)

• InvalidState

  • The project contains a dbcluster in a non-terminal state

  • recurse is false and the specified folder contains either subfolders or visible objects

  • partial is false and the specified folder contains more objects than

    can be deleted in one api call. For more information, see

    Service Limits.

API method: /class-xxxx/move

Specification

Moves the specified objects and/or folders into the specified folder. Objects and folders to be moved can be in any state and in any folder in the data container. Objects and folders that are in a folder listed in folders remain in the (moved) folder unless explicitly listed in objects or folders as well, in which case they are removed from their parent folder and moved to the destination folder described in folder. In addition, any objects explicitly listed in objects will pull along hidden objects that they also link to into the folder indicated as destination.

Inputs

• objects array of strings (optional) List of data object IDs to

  be moved

• folders array of strings (optional) List of folders to be

  moved

• destination string The destination folder

Outputs

• id string ID of the manipulated data container

Errors

• InvalidInput (the input is not a hash, objects (if provided) is not an array of nonempty strings, folders (if provided) is not an array of nonempty strings starting with "/", two of the folders in folders have the same name but different paths, destination is missing or is not a nonempty string starting with "/")

• ResourceNotFound (the specified data container does not exist, one of the specified objects and/or folders does not exist in the specified data container, or the destination folder does not exist)

• PermissionDenied (CONTRIBUTE access required)

• InvalidState (a folder listed in folders is or contains the destination folder)

API method: /class-xxxx/removeObjects

Specification

Removes the specified objects from the data container. Removal is propagated to hidden linked objects that are no longer reachable from some other visible object (also in the data container) via one or more links. The objects removed can be in any state, and there is no way to undo this operation. Removal of open objects may have additional consequences such as invalidating URLs provided for uploading data. The only way to reinstate a closed object into the data container is if a copy of it still exists in some other data container and if someone with the proper permissions clones the object back into the data container; note that any previously set user-provided metadata will be lost and will be initialized instead to the metadata from the source data container. See the section on Cloning for more details.

Inputs

• objects array of strings List of object IDs to be removed from the data container

• force boolean (optional, default false) If true, this operation should not throw an error even if the given object does not exist

Outputs

• id string ID of the manipulated data container

Errors

• InvalidInput (the input is not a hash, or objects is missing or is not an array of nonempty strings)

• ResourceNotFound

  • The specified data container does not exist

  • An object with the given route does not exist or does not exist in the specified data container and force was not set to true

• PermissionDenied (CONTRIBUTE/ADMINISTER access required, depending on PROTECTED flag)

• InvalidState

  • One of the objects is a dbcluster in a non-terminal state