How Does Uploads to Pure WorkHow Does Uploads to Pure Work

What

How do Pure handle file uploads, and which folders on the server is involved?

How

When you start to upload a file in Pure (or any other web-app running on tomcat) the file is stored in tomcat's temp folder, because the server can not hand over the file to the web-app until the upload has completed. 
This is to insure the application does not start to work on the file or move it, until the upload is completed.

Once the upload of the file is completed, it is handed to Pure, but since files are most of the time added to content that has not yet been saved, we can not save it in the permanent store or transfer it to Eprint etc. since we do not have a Pure ID to link it to until we save the content.

So for now, the file is in store in the Pure temp storage. This can be on the server itself, but it can also be on a network storage if you prefer. 
Note if you are using a network store, that becomes unavailable, Pure will stop working (because there is no where to save temporary files).

Usually files are in the temp folder only for a short time, because after the metadata is saved, on the next run on of the "Preserved content update"-job the files should be moved to the permanent store (network/Eprints/etc) so normally, the files should only be in the Pure temp folder for 5 minutes after the content has been saved in Pure.

But if the researchers uses all day uploading files to the content, then the files stay in the temp folder until the content is saved. 
If the content for some reason is never saved, then another cron job (Preserved Content Maintenance) will remove the orphaned files after a few days. See KB-384 for more information on this.

The Pure temp and permanent folders are configured under Administrator > Storage > File storage.

More information

KB-384 What is the Preserved Content Maintenance cron job?
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