Provide an Internal Validation tool

[NeilWJames]

A considerable number of support issues have been raised where the user gets a 404 (not found) error message and does not know why this has happened.

It can be due to the internal structure of the document, attachment and linked file not being correct and the user not being able to investigate this.

A tool should be created that will allow users with “edit_documents” capability to review all the documents that they can edit to ensure that each one:

• links to an attachment file;
• the attachment belongs to the document;
• the file name appears to be an MD5 encoding, i.e. 32 digit hexadecimal;
  (This is not strictly a reason for non-display, but does potentially expose information.)
• there is a file at the named location.

If all these conditions are met, then other than permissions there is no reason for this error message and a possible cause of frustration eliminated.

In some circumstances it will be possible to fix the internal inconsistency using data already in the database. For example, if the document post either does not contain an attachment id, or it does but the attachment is invalid, but the document does have a valid attachment, then it is possible to update the document to point to that one.

Only the user can say whether this is a valid action. The modified date of the document and proposed attachment should be displayed to help in that assessment.

Clearly a corrective action may be to upload a new copy of the document file.

Either way the user will know whether the problem is due to a structural inconsistency or not.

[NeilWJames]

Addressed by #265