I'm working on a web project but the scenario has some restrictions for a specific user case. We have been investigating a web-only solution and a dropbox-like native way to solve this.
The main restriction is that we shouldn't upload local files to a cloud. We can only track local URI's.
The use cases are:
As a developer, I should be able to link the URI of a local file to a webapp. Thus, I can click on a webapp element and the local file should be opened.
As a user, I should be able to add a directory and view the same structure on the webapp (clicking opens the file). The files are not uploaded.
Possible solutions:
We started trying the FileSystem API but when the specs. were fully defined, we figured out that a local sandbox was not enough, and we can't access to the local URI due to security issues.
We are considering a Dropbox-like native app. The Invision Sync App is closer to what we want.
The less optimal solution would be a complete native application.
The question:
Which is the more efficient way to achieve this? Any idea on some native libraries for doing this faster? Any web-only workaround?
Thanks in advance.
Related
I've done some digging around and a lot of the threads regarding file system and how it works with Meteor seem to be pretty outdated, not to mention packages related to file storage/serving (i.e. CollectionFS). I was wondering if anyone here has deep experience with handling files in lieu of 1.4 or even 1.3 (I am currently on 1.4.1.1).
My questions are as follows:
Did Meteor 1.3/1.4 come with any changes regarding fs?
What is the general best approach to storing and serving static assets in light of Meteor 1.4?
I've seen many threads that say dynamically storing files to /public triggers a server upload, but I've tested this on local by manually copy/pasting a .png file into /public, and it only triggers a client refresh with the console message Client modified -- refreshing. Would this hold true for files added during runtime, and would it hold true in production?
Currently I am trying to stay clear from S3 or any other third party CDN's to keep a low budget, and also trying to stay clear from storing files into Mongo.
Thanks for any and all opinions!
What about setting up a shared folder or NFS folder, have your Meteor app handle the file upload, write the file to that location, and configure Nginx or whatever you are using as the load balancer to serve those files. If you worry about browser refreshed when the file is put into the public folder, you do not need to write files to the public folder right?
I am writing a web service using play 2.0 in scala.
After getting client's configuration parameters, then the web service will take a while to generate some files. (Note: some files can be short, some other files can take long).
I figured out how to get client's configurations and trigger my computation,
now I need to present the generated files to client side at the end of the session.
So questions are:
How to present the files to client?
I'm thinking about returning a static folder link to client, so that they can go into the folder to
see further what files are there, and so when clicking on the files, the details of the files can be shown, either jpg or text.
But how?
How to not to block client during the generation of the files?
For example, client can still click on the files that are available at that moment.
Then here comes the third question:
How to let the client side know that the long-time computation file is available and listed in the folder?
I'm pretty new to web application, thanks for any suggestion, advice, or little examples are greatly appreciated too!
I would create a web interface to show the created files to your clients and create a background job to for the long computation process. You can create a wait page where a javascript check if the file is created.
I am building an Iphone Magazine App . I need the app to access a secured web folder/directory hosted on probably Apache or IIS to download pdf mag files inside the HTTP folder .
Is the conventional way of doing this by using the .htaccess to create a password protected folder for Apache ? How about IIS ?
And a conventional way for the Iphone App to access the folder ? Any Xcode example ?
Thanks .
Well, the conventional way would not be to expose the directory, using mod-autoindex (Apache). The directory should actually be outside the server root, to give it some semblance of protection.
Then you would write a small CGI (PHP, java servlet, ruby, etc), which enforces some sort of client-authentication scheme, and only then would it give you a nice list of what is in that directory. It could also be responsible for sending the download stream to a particular pdf. Only this script would have permission to view what's inside that directory.
So that's certainly not exhaustive as it pertains to security, but it should point you in the right direction. It really depends on how secure you need this directory.
Xcode (Cocoa) can easily access any remote URL information, regardless of the approach you take. Check out NSURLConnection and this guide:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/URLLoadingSystem/URLLoadingSystem.html
How do you distribute other files needed by your application that aren't in a jar file? For example, the application at http://www.javabeginner.com/java-swing/java-swing-shuffle-game . The download contains Shuffle.jar, Shuffle.bat, Score.dat, and an images folder with 3 images in it. I can see possibly putting the images directly in Shuffle.jar, but you wouldn't want to put Score.dat in the jar file because it changes. Is there somewhere you could identify this type of file in the jnlp?
The non-java files should be stored as resources. For files that change, you store the original or template file also as a resource in your jar. When the program starts, you have it check the local system to see if that file exists. If not, it creates the local file by copying the template file from the JAR resource. If the file already exists, then it is used as is.
To save files to the local system, even when running in the sandbox (unsigned), you can use the PersistenceService (javadoc / example). If your java application is signed, then you can use the regular File apis to write the file to the local machine, such as in a ".yourgame" subfolder under the user's home folder.
You can put all those files (except the scores file) in your jar file and load the contents using resource loading.
I've just deleted and restarted my reply twice now, changing my answer each time; this is confusing and needs a bit more clarification.
Are you SURE that application is supposed to be a Web Start app? On the site you linked to, it doesn't appear to be. Are you trying to take an application that was not designed as a Web Start application and change it into one that can be Web Start?
If it's not a Web Start app as your tag implies, then this question is open ended. You can distribute it 100 different ways.
If you are indeed trying to convert it into a Web Start app, you can start by packaging the images into the jar and that will alleviate your first headache if you just read them from there instead of from a File(). If it's going to be Web Start, then you need to decide how you want to keep scores. You have to decide what the scoring system is like before you can decide on how to go about it; will all the scores be kept on the web site hosting the Web Start app? Will that part still be local? If you want to get access to the local file system, you need to sign the jar, then you can extract the score.dat to the file system and do whatever you want with it if the end user accepts.
You need to figure out what you want to do before you can do it, or at least clear it up for us if you already know more than we know you know.
I was wondering if anyone knew of a widget that I could use to list/open a local/remote file within the GWT.
I thought I could use the FileUpload object but I can't figure out how to tell it where to browse.
Is it possible to tell the FileUpload object to look somewhere other than the local filesystem?
If not is there a simple widget where I can point it to a directory albeit local or remote via RPC?
Thanks,
C
This isn't a GWT issue, it's an issue of what's possible within a web app. Web apps cannot browse the local hard drive using only JavaScript and HTML, nor can they browse arbitrary remote sites.
You can create a button that when pressed, prompts the user to select a file from their local computer. Your web app then gets access to the path to that one file - but nothing else.
To actually browse local files within your web app, the only solution is to use Flash or Java.