Web-based job submission

You can develop web pages, run on your BOINC server, for submitting jobs. These pages are application-specific, since the way that users specify parameters and input files depends on the application.

These pages are easiest to implement in PHP. BOINC provides PHP APIs to stage files, authenticate users, create jobs and batches, and so on.

• inc/util.inc: utility functions
• inc/boinc_db.inc: access to BOINC database
• inc/submit_db.inc: access to job-submissions parts of BOINC database
• inc/submit_util.inc: job submission utility functions

Input files

Input files can be handled in any of several ways:

• Uploading them (from the submitter's computer) as part of the submission form. The submission script would then stage them.
• Using the user file sandbox mechanism.
• Serving them from a remote server.

Authorizing requests

Job-submissions scripts must check that the user is allowed to submit jobs. You can do this as follows:

$user = get_logged_in_user();
$user_submit = BoincUserSubmit::lookup_userid($user->id);
if (!$user_submit) error_page("no submit access");
$app = BoincApp::lookup("name='lammps'");
if (!$app) error_page("no lammps app");
if (!$user_submit->submit_all) {
    $usa = BoincUserSubmitApp::lookup("user_id=$user->id and app_id=$app->id");
    if (!$usa) {
        error_page("no submit access");
    }
}

Creating batches and jobs

You can create a batch as follows:

$batch_id = BoincBatch::insert(
    "(user_id, create_time, njobs, name, app_id, state)
    values ($user->id, $now, $njobs, '$batch_name', $app->id, ".BATCH_STATE_IN_PROGRESS.")"
);

Create jobs using the create_work script.

Examples

Two examples are included in the BOINC distribution:

• html/user/tree_threader.php
• html/user/lammps.php

TODO: the above are full of application-specific complexity; we should provide a minimal, generic example.