daitss/core — Issue #606: enhancement: is it possible to break out "invalid" SIP reject messages?
Author: lydiam
Created: 2011-12-15 22:33:38+00:00
State: open

Currently if GUI submission can't recognize submitted data as a SIP, the error message is fairly broad and difficult to troubleshoot:

"cannot extract sip archive, must be a valid tar or zip file containing directory with sip files"

What are the exact cases covered here, and can we distinguish between them with more specific error messages?

I'm guessing that possible cases are:

1. The data is neither a tar file nor a zip file. Recommended message: "Submitted data is not a tar file or zip file."
2. The data is a tarfile or a zip file, but it's not a tarred or zipped *directory*. Recommended message: "Submitted data is not a directory/folder. The top-level SIP directory/folder and its contents must be tarred or zipped prior to submission."

Several Affiliates have created zip files from the contents of a SIP but have not zipped the top-level directory (in fact, almost all new users assume that they should zip only the contents of the SIP directory because initially they don't fully understand that the directory/folder is part of the SIP. The reject messages we currently provide are not sufficient to inform new users of the exact problem with their data, and unless I can see the data they're attempting to submit I can't tell from the error message what the problem might be.

Are there any other cases that GUI submission checks? Can a file have a .zip extension yet not be zipped with the correct algorithm? If so, is there a way to detect that?

The above recommendations would need to be reviewed by the Affiliates to determine if they're understandable.