Preview

The Quilt catalog renders previews of the following file types. Whenever possible, Quilt streams the smallest possible subset of the data needed to generate the preview.

Previews are supported for uncompressed files as well as for gzip archives (.gz).

Plain text previews

Quilt can display any plaintext file format, including the following.

  • Most programming languages, with syntax highlighting (.cpp, .json, .js, .py, .sh, .sql, etc.)

  • Biological file formats (.bed, .cef, .gff, .fasta, .fastq, .sam, .pdbqt, .vcf, etc.)

  • Text files (.csv, .md, .readme, .tsv, .txt, etc.)

Chemical structures

The Quilt catalog uses the NGL Viewer library to render structures. By default, v3000 Molfiles are converted to v2000 by the JavaScript client for rendering.

The following file formats are supported:

  • Mol files (.mol, .mol2, .sdf)

  • .cif

  • .ent

  • .pdb

Image previews

The Quilt Catalog uses a Lambda function to automatically generate thumbnail previews of common image formats and select microscopy image formats such as .bmp, .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .webp, .tif, .tiff (including OME-TIFF), and .czi.

Known limitations

Automated previews of 8-bit depth and higher image files are not currently supported.

Binary and special file format previews

  • FCS Flow Cytometry files (.fcs)

  • Media (.mp4, .webm, .flac, .m2t, .mp3, .mp4, .ogg, .ts, .tsa, .tsv, .wav)

  • Jupyter notebooks (.ipynb)

  • .parquet

  • PDF (.pdf)

  • PowerPoint (.pptx)

  • Excel (.xls, .xlsx)

Advanced: HTML rendering and Quilt Package File Server

The Quilt Catalog supports HTML and JavaScript in preview via iframes. By default, preview iframes do not have IAM permissions and are therefore unable to access private files in S3.

If you wish for your HTML to access data within the enclosing package or bucket (at the viewer's level of permissions) and/or use origin-aware Web APIs such as data storage/cookies, you must opt in to Enable permissive HTML rendering in Bucket settings.

You should only enable this feature for buckets where you implicitly trust the contents of the HTML files.

Depending on the context where the HTML file is rendered (package vs bucket view), the iframe gets the following origin:

  • Inside a package view with permissive rendering enabled: the origin is the Quilt Package File Server.

  • Inside a bucket view with permissive rendering enabled: the origin is the AWS S3 bucket endpoint.

  • With permissive rendering disabled (irrespective of package or bucket view): the resource is treated as being from a special origin that always fails the same-origin policy (allow-same-origin iframe sandbox token is not set).

An important implication of same-origin policy is that the scripts executed under the same origin share LocalStorage data and cookies.

Package view example with permissive rendering enabled

  1. report.html is a file in a package that includes a publicly available JS library and a custom embedded script.

  2. Opening report.html in a package view generates a new session temporary-session-id.

  3. The file is served by the Quilt Package File Server under the /temporary-session-id/report.html path.

  4. All relative media and scripts are rendered in the same iframe relative-path format:

    • ./img.jpg is resolved to /temporary-session-id/img.jpg

    • script.js is resolved to /temporary-session-id/script.js

  5. The allow-same-origin iframe sandbox token is enabled, the origin is the Quilt Package File Server, the LocalStorage API is available.

Bucket view example with permissive rendering enabled

  1. report.html is a file in a bucket example-bucket that includes a publicly available JS library and custom embedded script.

  2. When opening report.html in bucket view, it is served directly by S3 via a signed HTTPS URL, e.g. https://example-bucket.s3.region.amazonaws.com/report.html?versionId=...&X-Amz-....

  3. All relative media and scripts are rendered in the same iframe relative-path format:

    • ./img.jpg is resolved to /img.jpg

    • script.js is resolved to /script.js

  4. The allow-same-origin iframe sandbox token is enabled, the origin is the S3 bucket endpoint (e.g. https://example-bucket.s3.region.amazonaws.com), the LocalStorage API is available.

Example with permissive rendering disabled

  1. report.html is a file in a bucket example-bucket that includes a publicly available JS library and custom embedded script.

  2. When opening report.html in any view it is served directly by S3 via a signed HTTPS URL, e.g. https://example-bucket.s3.region.amazonaws.com/report.html?versionId=...&X-Amz-....

  3. All relative media and scripts are rendered in the same iframe relative-path format:

    • ./img.jpg is resolved to /img.jpg

    • script.js is resolved to /script.js

  4. The allow-same-origin iframe sandbox token is disabled, a virtual unique origin is used (always failing the same-origin policy), the LocalStorage API is unavailable.

Live packages

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