I do see the concern of uploading data through the api but I don't think filtering on file types is the right solution. It seems to be an issue with allowing everyone to register. Wouldn't it be better to at least validate e-mail addresses of new users on the main instance? This would probably resolve most issues related to unwanted content on the server?

Cheers,
Jelle

On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 3:55 PM, Greg Von Kuster <greg@bx.psu.edu> wrote:

Hi Peter,

On Jul 27, 2011, at 9:34 AM, Peter Cock wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 2:28 PM, Greg Von Kuster <greg@bx.psu.edu> wrote:
>> Helo Jelle,
>> I've taken a look at your patches and the code looks good.
>> However, I'm wondering why you find it necessary to upload image files to
>> Galaxy. Do tools exist that take image files as input? If the Galaxy
>> community finds this feature as a good addition to Galaxy, we can probably
>> incorporate it into the distribution.
>
> I think it is a nice feature - and can come up with some use cases too.
> How about future tools for image analysis? e.g. microscope photos of
> cultures to automatically do cell/organism counting, or plant leaves
> for pathogenicity assays.

Ok, I'm convinced.

>
>> However, we'll need an additional feature before we can do that. We'll
>> need to implement a type of config setting that enables / disables the
>> uploading of image files via the Galaxy api. ...
>
> Why not just allow it? A general configuration allowing/blocking any
> file type from being uploaded makes more sense to me than just
> wanting to block images.

The enhancement would be to add a config setting to allow / disallow uploading any data type ( not just images ) via the api. The problem with just allowing uploading of images is that we'll end up hosting a bunch of porn on our main public Galaxy instance. This has happened to us in the past...

>
> Peter

>

Greg Von Kuster
Galaxy Development Team
greg@bx.psu.edu