Extract Zip

Overview

Includes a Smart Service "Extract Zip" which will unzip the contents of a given Appian zip document into the destination Appian folder.  The newly created/updated documents will be returned as the output.  The unzipping process will maintain the folder structure in Appian.

Key Features & Functionality

  • Supports 7Zip files
  • Extracts archives containing files with names that are at least 1 character in length
  • Temporary files saved on disk will be removed as soon as they are no longer required
Anonymous
  • If you have not tried it already, enable the following logger in your application server:

    log4j.logger.com.vuram.plugins.fileUtils.unzip=DEBUG

    Then reproduce the issue. The additional log entries in the app server log should give you more information on what may be going wrong.

    More details on how to enable custom loggers here: docs.appian.com/.../Customizing_Application_Logging.html

  • Hi,

    We are using this plugin to extract .zip file and it is working fine in DEV, SIT and UAT but in PROD - though it is executed without error, the file is not getting extracted. Is there any way we can fix this? Please suggest.

    Please note, for the first time we ran this PROD, it extracted but from the second time it is giving the document variable as blank.

    Thanks

  • What is the largest zip file that this plugin can extract? I am attempting to extract a zip that is 115MB, and only ~2.5MB of data is extracted (~1/5 of the files within the zip folder).

  • We are trying to unzip an Appian application zip file that contains documents (images in particular). We noticed that the smart service is failing with the following error: 

    org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke com.appiancorp.suiteapi.content.exceptions.InsufficientNameUniquenessException: Name is insufficiently unique

    We investigated and found that Appian creates subfolders for the images with the same name as the image (Folder and file have the name as the image UUID). After deleting the folders in the zip file, the plugin worked perfectly fine. Is it possible for this to be fixed?

  • To answer the previous questions:

    1. 7Zip is a separate file format. The plugin supports files of type ".zip" and ".7z". See https://www.7-zip.org/

    2. "Temporary files saved on disk" refers to temporary files created during the extraction process, not the final Appian document created by the smart service. To go into more detail, the original implementation of the plugin would create temporary copies of files under /tmp which would persist until the application server was restarted which could lead to overutilization of disk in some scenarios. In the latest version of the plugin, only these temporary files are removed as soon as they are no longer required.

    3. The Compatible Versions list is only updated when the plugin is updated, but there is no reason to expect that the plugin will not work with the latest versions of Appian. The best approach is to test the plugin in your intended version to ensure it works as expected.

    Regarding the previous question concerning file/folder/group permissions on the documents, I would suggest reviewing the security configurations on the documents themselves as well as the parent folder and associated groups, as was mentioned. This error could also be caused by out of date group membership caching. However, it sounds more like a security configuration issue than an issue with the plugin itself. If this issue persists, I would recommend creating a ticket with Appian Support for in-depth troubleshooting assistance.

  • Meant to add this....Is this plugin compatible with Version 18.3...18.4? The information provided indicates 17.4 is the last compatible version and another user indicated he had issues when upgrading to 18.2. Please advise.

  • What does 'Supports 7Zip files' mean? Does it mean you can have a zip file that contains up to 7 zip files? Also - when you say Temporary files saved on disk will be removed as soon as they are no longer required...how does that work? I was thinking of using this plugin to unzip files from a zip file retrieved daily and stored in a folder. The individual files would then be extracted to another folder and used for daily processing. Does this mean the 'zip' file is removed?

  • We have been encountering an issue when using this plugin ever since upgrading to 18.2.

    For all files placed into Appian via this plugin, all basic users in our application have been unable download the file through the a!documentDownloadLink() function. A screen with the following message is displayed:

    {"error":"APNX-1-0000-000","message":"User Does Not Have Rights to Perform this Operation","title":"An Error Has Occurred"}

    Administrators are able to download the file with no issues.

    The parent folder where the extracted file resides has a security group with Administrator level access. The basic users downloading the file have been placed inside the group so it is odd that they would see an error message related to access rights.

    Any advice would be greatly appreciated.