Article Discussion: File Management with PHP

We can find many articles related to uploading, viewing, and downloading files. This article is written on the basic concept of uploading and managing files. File uploading is the process of copying the file from your machine to the remote server. Other users of the same system then share this file by viewing or downloading it. What happens when you upload a file that already exists in the remote folder to which you are uploading?


Read the full article here: File Management with PHP

Replaces the file

Nice article.

But what about tracking the status of a download? Seems like everyone writes about how to upload files, but what about those who want to make sure the user got the file or detect if the user canceled the download. This really is key in a documtent management system when you want to keep an eye on versions and who is allowed to checkout a file.

How can your tell that the file was completely downloaded?
Did the user cancel the download?
Did the user's network connection fail?
If the user canceled the download what is the status of the availablity of the file for checkout by another user?

These are just some of the problems associated with download management that everyone seems to overlook. An article addressing some of these issues with code examples would be a big help.

Thanks.

Well, with basic PHP using a browser interface and using HTML links to download the files you simply cannot determine whether or not anything went wrong. You only know the user clicked a link, and that's it.

If you want more info, you'll have to write your own (client side) download manager and communicate with a script (/webservice) that uses sockets (or something similar) to send the files over. If you do it that way you *can* detect canceled downloads if your download manager sends an ACK on successfully receiving the file (ie. no ACK received within a certain timeframe = download failed/aborted).

I haven't used sockets before but aren't there socket functions in PHP? Could I use these to write the file manager? I don't mind writing a file manager just to meet my needs, my users would love the feature.

The second file_upload_manager.php is this not the file_display_manager.php?

Good luck
Bjorn

If you have shared hosting and your hosting provider supports using sockets (not all of them do), then there's no problem on the server-side because PHP does indeed support sockets (URL). You'll still have to take care of the client-side of things though...

Where do I begin on the client side? The server is mine and I have full control over the entire system.

a good article.

Good and very useful article.

When you click on a file, you open it in the browser.

How to do for opening in his application (.doc with Winword) ?
In local.

Thank you for advice.

However i dont really like storing data in the database as this whole data is possible to get from the file itself. plus when you upload a custom file by FTP or something simmilar -- the database is not updated and therefore the file is not accessible... so why use a database?