Programmatic Submission¶

Introduction¶

Submissions of different types can be made programmatically using XML.

A receipt XML with accession numbers is provided upon successful submission. Any validation or other errors will be written in the receipt XML as well.

Production and test services¶

There are two programmatic Webin submission services. One for test submissions and another for production submissions:

Test service URL: https://wwwdev.ebi.ac.uk/ena/submit/drop-box/submit
Production service URL: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/submit/drop-box/submit

The test service is recreated from the full content of the production service every day at 03.00 GMT/BST. Therefore, any submissions made to the test service will be removed by the following day.

When you are using the test service the receipt XML will contain the following message:

<INFO>This submission is a TEST submission and will be discarded within 24 hours</INFO>

It is advisable to first test your submissions using the Webin test service before establising an automated submission pipeline.

Upload data files¶

Data files must be uploaded into a submitter specific private Webin file upload area before they can be submitted. Always keep a local copy of the uploaded files until the files have been successfully submitted and archived. The Webin file upload area is a temporary transit area which is not backed up and subject to a fair use policy.

Once uploaded, data files are submitted by referring to them from Run XML or Analysis XML. Run XML is used for used for sequence read submissions while Analysis XML is used for other types of submissions (e.g. genome assemblies).

More information of uploading data files and our the fair use policy is available here.

Submission protocol¶

Submissions are made through the secure HTTPS protocol using POST multipart/form-data according to RFC1867.

Authentication method¶

Webin user name and password must be provided using basic HTTP authentication.

When using curl the user name and password are provided using the -u option:

curl -u username:password

Types of XML¶

The type of each submitted XML file must be specified at time of submission.

When using curl each XML file is submitted using the ‘-F’ option:

-F "XMLTYPE=@FILENAME"

where the XMLTYPE is one of the following POST parameters:

SUBMISSION (XML Schema)
STUDY (XML Schema)
SAMPLE (XML Schema)
EXPERIMENT (XML Schema)
RUN (XML Schema)
ANALYSIS (XML Schema)
DAC (XML Schema)
POLICY (XML Schema)
DATASET (XML Schema)
PROJECT (XML Schema)

You can include multiple records of the same type in the same submission as part of a SET. For example, by grouping SAMPLE records in a <SAMPLE_SET></SAMPLE_SET>.

The maximum allowed size of a submitted XML file is 15MB. If your XML exceeds this size, please split your records into smaller XMLs and submit them across multiple submissions.

Below is an example of a sequence read data submission to the Webin test service:

curl -u username:password -F "SUBMISSION=@submission.xml" -F "EXPERIMENT=@experiment.xml" -F "RUN=@run.xml" "https://wwwdev.ebi.ac.uk/ena/submit/drop-box/submit/"

Identifying objects¶

Each submitted object is uniquely identified within a submission account using the alias attribute. Once an object has been submitted no other object of the same type can use the same alias within the submission account. Objects can refer to other objects within a submission account by either alias or the assigned accession number.

Identifying submitters¶

The center_name attribute defines the submitting institution. The center name is automatically assigned from submission account details except for broker accounts. Brokers should provide a center name which reflects the institute where the data was generated. For brokers, the broker_name field is automatically assigned at time of submission.

Submission XML¶

Each submission should contain a submission XML file which defines the submission actions. The most commonly used submission actions are listed below.

Submission XML: submit new objects¶

The ADD action is used when submitting new objects. A corresponding submission XML will look like:

<SUBMISSION>
     <ACTIONS>
         <ACTION>
             <ADD/>
         </ACTION>
    </ACTIONS>
</SUBMISSION>

Submission XML: submit studies with release date¶

If no release date is provided then submitted studies and any associated objects will be publicly released two months after the date of study submission.

A release date can be provided for studies by using the HOLD action together with the ADD action:

<SUBMISSION>
    <ACTIONS>
        <ACTION>
            <ADD/>
        </ACTION>
        <ACTION>
            <HOLD HoldUntilDate="TODO: release date"/>
        </ACTION>                            
    </ACTIONS>
</SUBMISSION>

The HoldUntilDate specifies the public release date of any studies submitted within the submission. This can be at most two years in the future.

Submission XML: make study public¶

A study can be made immediately public by using RELEASE action with the study accession number:

<SUBMISSION>
    <ACTIONS>
         <ACTION>
              <RELEASE target="TODO: study accession number"/>
         </ACTION>
    </ACTIONS>
</SUBMISSION>

Submission XML: set study hold date¶

You can update the release date of a study by specifying its accession alongside a new release date:

<SUBMISSION>
    <ACTIONS>
        <ACTION>
            <HOLD target="TODO: study accession number" HoldUntilDate="TODO: YYYY-MM-DD"/>
        </ACTION>
    </ACTIONS>
</SUBMISSION>

This applies only to non-public studies. It is not possible to suppress a public study by this method.

The new release date must be not more than two years in the future.

Submission XML: update existing objects¶

The MODIFY action is used when updating existing objects. A corresponding submission XML will look like:

<SUBMISSION>
     <ACTIONS>
         <ACTION>
             <MODIFY/>
         </ACTION>
    </ACTIONS>
</SUBMISSION>

Checklist for preparing an object for update:

The new XML for the object must either contain the original alias or the assigned accession.
If you provide an alias then it must be given exactly as in the initial submission.
If you provide an accession then it must be the accession number assigned to the object in the initial submission.
Run XML objects can’t be updated to point to different data files.
Analysis XML objects can’t be updated to point to different data files.

Below is an extract of an study XML which contains an accession number:

<STUDY accession="ERP000011">
   ...       
</STUDY>

Below is an extract of an study XML which contains an alias:

<STUDY alias="study1">
   ...       
</STUDY>

Submission XML: validate objects¶

The VALIDATE action is used when validating a submission without actually creating or updating any objects. It can be used together with the ADD action (default):

<SUBMISSION>
     <ACTIONS>
         <ACTION>
             <ADD/>
         </ACTION>
         <ACTION>
             <VALIDATE/>
         </ACTION>
    </ACTIONS>
</SUBMISSION>

Or with the MODIFY action:

<SUBMISSION>
     <ACTIONS>
         <ACTION>
             <MODIFY/>
         </ACTION>
         <ACTION>
             <VALIDATE/>
         </ACTION>
    </ACTIONS>
</SUBMISSION>

Submission XML: cancel objects¶

Pre-publication private objects (with the exception of assemblies) can be cancelled by all submitters.

To cancel objects, you must use the CANCEL action in the submission XML.

The CANCEL action should point to the object that is being cancelled. Please note that the CANCEL action will be propagated from studies to all associated experiments and analyses, and from experiments to all associated runs.

Below is an example of a submission XML used to cancel objects:

<SUBMISSION>
    <ACTIONS>
        <ACTION>
            <CANCEL target="TODO: object accession number"/>
        </ACTION>
    </ACTIONS>
</SUBMISSION>

Submission XML: request a receipt XML¶

The RECEIPT action can be used to request a receipt XML issued as a result of an ADD action that contains all the issued accession numbers. This is expecially useful in cases where the submission request times out before it has as completed. The submission process will continue neverthless and the issued accession numbers can be later requested using the RECEIPT action.

SUBMISSION_SET>
    <SUBMISSION>
        <ACTIONS>
            <ACTION>
                <RECEIPT target="submission alias or accessions"/>
           </ACTION>          
       </ACTIONS>
    </SUBMISSION>
</SUBMISSION_SET>

Submission actions without submission XML¶

Some submission actions can be defined using the ACTION POST parameter. If the ACTION parameter is provided then the submission XML will be ignored.

You can use the following actions in place of submission XML:

ACTION=ADD: create new objects in the archive
ACTION=MODIFY: update existing objects in the archive
ACTION=VALIDATE (same as ACTION=VALIDATE,ADD)
ACTION=VALIDATE,ADD: validate new objects without creating them
ACTION=VALIDATE,MODIFY: validate update of existing objects without updating them

In addition, you can use the following POST parameters with the ACTION parameter:

HOLD_DATE: set the public release date for a new study or sample
CENTER_NAME: set the submitting center name (mandatory for brokers)

For example, submit a new analysis:

curl -u username:password -F "ACTION=ADD" "https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/submit/drop-box/submit/" -F "ANALYSIS=@analysis.xml"

or submit a new study with a public release date:

curl -u username:password -F "HOLD_DATE=31-11-2019"  -F "ACTION=ADD" "https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/submit/drop-box/submit/" -F "PROJECT=@project.xml"

Receipt XML¶

Once a submission has been processed a receipt XML (XML Schema) is returned.

To know if the submission was successful look in the first line of the <RECEIPT> block.

The attribute success will have value true or false. If the value is false then the submission did not succeed. In this case check the rest of the receipt for error messages and after making corrections, try the submission again.

If the success attribute is true then the submission was successful. The receipt will contain the accession numbers of the objects that you have submitted. In the case of a study submission this is likely to be the accession that you will be including in a publication.

An example of a successful run submission:

<RECEIPT receiptDate="2014-12-02T16:06:20.871Z" success="true">
    <RUN accession="ERR049536" alias="run_1" status="PRIVATE"/>
    <SUBMISSION accession="ERA390457" alias="submission_1"/>
    <ACTIONS>ADD</ACTIONS>
</RECEIPT>

Above, the assigned run accession number ERR049536 is provided in the accession attribute within the RUN block.

If the submission was not successful the Receipt XML will contain the error messages within the MESSAGES block:

<RECEIPT receiptDate="2014-12-02T16:06:20.871Z" success="false">
   ...
   <MESSAGES>
      <ERROR>This is an error message.</ERROR>
   </MESSAGES>
   ...
</RECEIPT>

Retrieving submitted XMLs¶

Submitted XMLs can be retrieved from the submission service using the assigned accession numbers. This can be a helpful, for example, as a starting point for making modifications to the submitted objects.

Please substitute <accession> with the assigned accession number in the URLs below:

Project XML: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/submit/drop-box/projects/<accession>
Study XML: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/submit/drop-box/studies/<accession>
Sample XML: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/submit/drop-box/samples/<accession>
Run XML: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/submit/drop-box/runs/<accession>
Experiment XML: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/submit/drop-box/experiments/<accession>
Analysis XML: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/submit/drop-box/analyses/<accession>