Kaggle CLI Submission File Size Validation

Kaggle CLI submission file size validation

0 reputation · 03 Sept 2025, 01:38 UTC

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Competition Submission Constraints

The kaggle competitions submit command in the Kaggle CLI (v1.5.12) handles the upload of submission files to competition endpoints. Current behavior relies on server-side enforcement of file size limits, which vary by competition and are not exposed via the metadata or files API commands.

Client-Side Validation Gap

Because the CLI does not perform local size checks before initiating the upload, large files are transmitted entirely before the API returns a generic HTTP 400 error. This creates uncertainty in automated pipelines where submission limits may be adjusted by organizers without a corresponding update to the CLI version or API schema.

Does the Kaggle API provide a programmatic way to retrieve the specific submission size limit for a given competition? If not, is there a planned configuration flag for the CLI to implement local file size validation prior to upload?

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What the API actually returns

The GET /api/v1/competitions/{id}/metadata endpoint never includes a submissionFileSizeLimit field. The only machine‑readable source for a limit is the competition’s rules or data page, which is rendered as HTML for humans.

Why the CLI uploads blindly

The current kaggle competitions submit implementation streams the entire file to the server and relies on the generic 400 response for size violations. A pre‑flight flag (e.g., --max-submission-size) has been requested in the kaggle‑api GitHub issue tracker but is not yet implemented in v1.5.12.

Practical workaround

# fetch the rules page and extract the limit
curl -s https://www.kaggle.com/c/<competition>/rules | grep -oP 'Submission file must be less than \\K\\d+ GB'
# enforce locally before calling the CLI

Keep in mind that scraping is fragile; any UI redesign can break the regex. Until the CLI adds a native flag, this is the most reliable way to avoid uploading oversized files in CI pipelines.