Desktop file uploader for a website - asp.net

I'm writing an upload functionality for a website (Javascript, ASP.NET). The requirement is that the user would upload a large folder of multiple files (~20k files having ~3GB in total). We would like to save the user from most of the trouble with reuploading failed files.
I've seen that some websites allow you to download desktop app for uploading and downloading files. I'd like to write something similar. I've been doing some research on the internet but I can only find JavaScript/Flash/etc. web solutions for that.
Do you know any tutorials on how to do it? Or maybe some article which explains possible ways of implementing that. Do you think my approach is good or should I invest some time in web solution instead of desktop app?

You can use dropzone. İt seems useful to file upload functionalities

Related

What is the best architecture for file management website?

Here is what I think my website should be able to provide to user.
Ability to upload file to the system. It should not blocking, user should be able to surf other pages of the website while upload is ongoing. Once upload is done user will get notified about upload.
User should be able to view of his/her uploaded files in website.
Ability to edit files in web browsers using third party APIs
Number of user are going to be around 5000, and all of them might upload files at the same time so performance should not decrease.
Where should I store this files? How to make sure that read and write of files on this directory should handle concurrent user request?
Considering above points. What should be the best way to architect this website?
Are there any existing web framework that play along with this type of architecture like rails, express?
If you want to have the ability to browse the site while a file is uploading, you'll want to use something on the front end that overrides anchor tags and asynchronously fetches the next page - there might be a library or something to accomplish this but it should be easy to implement yourself with jQuery.
To make this easier (and for many other reasons), you'll almost definitely want to structure your site with an MVC (Model View Controller) architecture. Rails is structured this way, as is almost any web framework. It doesn't sound like what you're describing is better suited to Rails over PHP or Python etc so just use whatever language or framework you (or your developers) feel most comfortable with. You might want to do some research into available plugins for editing files (it really depends on what type of files you want to edit and how) and using those to influence your decision on which language to choose as well.
With regards to storing files on your server, any logical system should suffice. Perhaps:
/username/year/month/day/myFile.txt
You'll want to do something to ensure filenames don't clash as well. And obviously you'd want a database storing the information linking files to users.

Is source code off an app avilble for the user?

If i write an desktop app in tidesdk or tide kit will it be possible for users to read my source code, just like from ordinary web page or not ?
Yes, if the user knows where to look. It's not viewable by right clicking the window and selecting source, but if they browse to the install directory, all the HTML / related files are there in broad daylight.
You could come up with some strategies to protect them, either using encryption or just providing a bootstrapper application which downloads the rest of the source from a server on startup or something like that...but if it's a huge concern of yours you're probably better off using a different platform.

Build an Offline website - Burn it on a CD

I need to build a website that can be downloaded to a CD.
I'd like to use some CMS (wordpress,Kentico, MojoPortal) to setup my site, and then download it to a cd.
There are many program that know how to download a website to a local drive, but how to make the search work is beyond my understanding.
Any idea???
The project is supposed to be an index of Local community services, for communities without proper internet connection.
If you need to make something that can be viewed from a CD, the best approach is to use only HTML.
WordPress, for example, needs Apache and MySQL to run. And although somebody can "install" the website on his own computer if you supply the content via a CD, most of your users will not be knowledgeable enough to do this task.
Assuming you are just after the content of the site .. in general you should be able to find a tool to "crawl" or mirror most sites and create an offline version that can be burned on a CD (for example, using wget).
This will not produce offline versions of application functionality like search or login, so you would need to design your site with those limitations in mind.
For example:
Make sure your site can be fully navigated without JavaScript (most "crawl" tools will discover pages by following links in the html and will have limited or no JavaScript support).
Include some pages which are directory listings of resources on the site (rather than relying on a search).
Possibly implement your search using a client-side technology like JavaScript that would work offline as well.
Use relative html links for images/javascript, and between pages. The tool you use to create the offline version of the site should ideally be able to rewrite/correct internal links for the site, but it would be best to minimise any need to do so.
Another approach you could consider is distributing using a clientside wiki format, such as TiddlyWiki.
Blurb from the TiddlyWiki site:
TiddlyWiki allows anyone to create personal SelfContained hypertext
documents that can be published to a WebServer, sent by email,
stored in a DropBox or kept on a USB thumb drive to make a WikiOnAStick.
I think you need to clarify what you would like be downloaded to the CD. As Stennie said, you could download the content and anything else you would need to create the site either with a "crawler" or TiddlyWiki, but otherwise I think what you're wanting to develop is actually an application, in which case you would need to do more development than what standard CMS packages would provide. I'm not happy to, but would suggest you look into something like the SalesForce platform. Its a cloud based platform that may facilitate what you're really working towards.
You could create the working CMS on a small web/db server image using VirtualBox and put the virtual disk in a downloadable place. The end user would need the VirtualBox client (free!) and the downloaded virtual disk, but you could configure it to run with minimal effort for the creation, deployment and running phases.

view documents in browser without downloading

I have an asp.net site which is essentially a repository of documents uploaded by users.
I would like visitors to the site to be able to view any of these documents in some sort of "document viewer" without ever being able to download the file to their local system.
Documents are all Office files and PDFs.
Please advise if there are open source or commercial "document viewer" controls that you have used and would recommend.
EDIT: I own the server and can load any server components. Unfortunately i can't use flash based viewers as it must be compatible accross all browsers and devices.
We had a similar requirement and we converted all office docs and PDF files to SWF files using Print2Flash (http://print2flash.com/) and display them in the browser. There are both free and commercial editions of print2flash.
Just answering for anyone else looking up this info.
I ended up going with Adeptol's Ajax Document Viewer which works really well.

WebDev: What is the best way to do a multi-file upload?

I want (barely computer literate) people to easily submit a large number of files (pictures) through my web application. Is there a simple, robust, free/cheap, widely used, standard tool/component (Flash or .NET - sorry no java runtime on the browser) that allows a web user to select a folder or a bunch of files on their computer and upload them?
swfupload, the best tool I know that lets you do that. Simple, easy to use and even has a fallback mechanism for the 1% web users that don't have flash 8+.
I found that the best way to upload a bunch of files is to zip them and upload a single file (and then decomress it on server). However that's probably not a good option for the audience you are targeting.
We had a company come up with a Silverlight upload that could resize the pictures before hand so that the 5MB files didn't have to be uploaded and then resized. The image resizing capability wasn't included with the clr that comes with Silverlight. Occipital came up with their own. You can see it here:
http://www.occipital.com/fjcore.html
I don't know what they would charge, but we have been extremely happy with how it works. If you don't need the resize capability before uploading then I would go with one of the flash upload options like http://swfupload.org or http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/FlashUpload.aspx

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