Getting Started / Configuration
The first thing XNAT Populate does is resolve dependencies, so it may appear to be hanging for a couple minutes when running it for the first time.
XNAT Populate is very much a new project, and there is very little error handling. If something goes wrong, the script will likely terminate and print a stack trace out to the command line.
XNAT Populate is a groovy project to push data into an XNAT instance. (XNAT 1.7 or later is required.) Its main uses would be to push a lot of data into an XNAT if the data can be organized according to the desired YAML structure, or to populate a demo/sandbox server with a variety of data. The script uses groovy with dependencies managed by Grape, so the only prerequisite is a recent groovy installation. Then, simply invoke it on the command line by:
groovy PopulateXnat.groovy <parameters>The script has the following parameters:
| Short parameter name | Long parameter name | Required? | Takes argument? | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| -u | --user | yes | yes | Specifies the XNAT user to upload data. For full functionality, the user should be an admin, but this is not strictly required to use only parts of the features. |
| -p | --pass | yes | yes | The password for the user specified above. |
| -s | --url | yes | yes | The site URL for your XNAT instance to populate. |
| -d | --data | yes | yes | This specifies a text file which defines the data to upload (separated by newlines). See Populate Data for more information about available data. Alternatively, instead of specifying a file, you can enter a comma-separated list of projects here. |
| -g | --config | no | yes | Specifies a YAML file as defined in Site Configuration to set site level properties. |
| -c | --clean | no | no | DANGEROUS. Add this flag to delete preexisting XNAT projects matching the data list. Don't use in production. Also, always back up your data just in case something goes wrong. |
| -r | --refresh-data | no | no | Semi-dangerous. Add this flag to clear out the data folder on startup. Useful to grab updated copies of data. |
| -y | --refresh-yaml | no | no | Add this flag to delete all YAML files in data folder on startup. Useful to grab updated configuration YAML. |
| -k | --insecure | no | no | Add this flag to ignore SSL errors on https sites. Useful for dev/test environments. |
| -su | --secure-users | no | no | Add this flag to only add existing XNAT users to created projects. Users that are specified in project configurations will not be created (to prevent insecure user accounts). |
| -e | --export-mode | no | no | Add this flag to use XNAT Populate to export data *from* your XNAT to the local file system in a format that it can understand (can then be used to send to a different XNAT). |
| -w | --delay | no | yes | Optional delay (in milliseconds) after each session import. Useful if rapid session imports is degrading performance on the server in constrained memory situations. |
| -m | --prompt | no | no | Add this flag to allow XNAT Populate to prompt you for your password instead of including it in the arguments. |