ED2 KC- 413 Payload is Too Large

March 2021 Update: The easiest thing to do is try importing the files as a Zip and the server should accept

When the Import App just goes blank and doesn’t leave an error in the app’s “console”, check the JS console in your browser’s Dev Tools. You’ll like get have an error like this:

helper.js:110 POST SERVER/api/dataValueSets.json?
dataElementIdScheme=UID&dryRun=false&idScheme=UID&orgUnitIdScheme=UID
&preheatCache=false&skipExistingCheck=false&strategy=UPDATES&skipAudit=false
&format=csv&async=true&firstRowIsHeader=true 413

This is the import app failing to POST a dataset to the dataValueSets endpoint. See the 413 at the end? That is the HTTP Response Code.

The 413 response code happens to be mean the Payload is Too Large. In layman’s terms, the file is too big for the specification on the server.

The HTTP 413 Payload Too Large response status code indicates that the request entity is larger than limits defined by server; the server might close the connection or return a Retry-After header field.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/413

How to fix it:

You’re going to need to submit a ticket to the system’s team to change this setting, but here is how you fix this issue.

  1. Reduce the number of records in your file
    1. Easier said than done when you have a ton of data to import.
  2. Chunk the file and import them programmatically
    1. Eh, yea but may not be best for the situation. I.e. The client is routinely importing these files.
    2. Change the client_max_body_size parameter in the NGINX performance.conf file.
      1. java /etc/nginx/conf.d/performance.conf

By default, NGINX blocks all files on our servers that are larger than 16 Megabytes (16M). This can be changed in the config file. Then restart NGINX and voila.

Don’t forget: hot tip: we tend to use this when restarting tomcat because it tests the config to make sure it is valid before restarting:

3:41

nginx -t && nginx -s reload

Side Note on NGINX Reload vs Restart: When adding or editing server blocks default to reload over restart. On reload, Nginx loads the new configuration, starts new worker processes with the new configuration, and gracefully shuts down old worker processes. Restart the service only when making significant modifications like changing ports or interfaces.

Hot Tip (courtesy of Matt Helbing): we tend to use this when restarting tomcat because it tests the config to make sure it is valid before restarting: nginx -t && nginx -s reload the && means do the second command only if first succeeds_._

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