Store files uploaded by users - asp.net

I am building a dating site, the user have the option to upload 6 images.
my question is where to save them.
I red about file system/data bases approach and didn't figured out yet which one to use, and this is the first time for me to accept files.
So where to save them? in the root application folder? in the app_data folder?
i red here about the same* questions but didn't find a conclusive answer.

Related

When people mention storing files on the File System, is that referring to a folder within the app?

I need to store pdf files that will keep increasing with time on a folder for my app. But I'm not sure which method is consider 'good practice' between if I should store it in a folder within the project architecture (i.e. inside Content folder) or in a folder outside the app. I tried searching online but most people just mention 'File System' and don't give examples on where do they store it.
So my question is, when people mention storing files on the File System, do they usually mean storing it in a folder inside the app (like Content folder) or do they mean storing it in a folder outside the app?
For example: let's say my apps folders/files are within the container folder: /Container/AppFolder/. Should I store the pdf files on the apps Content folder (i.e. /Container/AppFolder/Content) or should I create a new folder OUTSIDE the apps folders to hold these pdf files? (i.e. /Container/PDFFiles, so basically two folders within the container folder - one folder for the pdf files and the other folder for the app)? Which one is consider a good practice? I have considered just putting these files on the Content folder but as the amount of files keep increasing I'm not sure if is bad practice.
Thanks in advance.
You can put it where ever you want on the server, the program will just need proper permissions to that location (I use the IO namespace). However you should put thought into how to organize the files and folders. Is each file to be tied to a specific ID or just all in 1 folder? Think of things you'll need to handle like invalid file names (special characters), duplicate file names etc. Is the location strictly 1 way (upload only)? Or are you enabling download functionality? If you have download functionality stress security, probably creating a download.aspx page specifically for handling download requests and authentication.

Get File Names in Web Directory with Swift

I've got an archive located at my web site with files in it that I'd like users of my app to be able to access. Files at this location may be changing so I'd like to be able download a file list that is then presented to the users, who would then click on the file(s) to download.
I think I've got the downloading handled with NSURLSession, but I can't find a direct way to get a list of the files located at http://www.example.com/archive/ in Swift. I feel like I'm missing something obvious. By the way, I'm not well versed in most aspects of "web programming" so small words would be appreciated if this involves stuff like POST and GET. Thanks.

How to make files available as a download link in asp.net?

In my asp.net website, users can upload multiple files, which reside in 'upload' folder on server's hard drive. I am saving the files by renaming them with username + original file name
Example : if I upload file 'user.text' and my code is 1000, then the file will be saved in upload folder with name '1000_user.Text'. This is for identification of file against a particular user.
Now, when admin logs in application and selects a user, he should be able to see all files uploaded by him/her. Files should be in downloadable format to him.
How can I achieve the same? I have totally no idea, how to go for it ?
This is not how you ask a question on SO. Anyway already a piece of advice :
Store your files OUTSIDE of the webroot, and use a script in your website to get the files and render it to the user. This is for security reason : if someone manages to upload a malicious file, you don't want him to be able to execute it from the web.
Store file info and upload info in a database : who uploaded what and when ? Relying on file name isn't a good idea. You could also store the file in the database eventually (as a BLOB), but I prefer the good old filesystem
I can suggest you couple of ways based on feasibility. Approach 1 - If you can make database changes, when user is uploading a file you should save dynamically generated filename against the user in database. This way when admin logs in and wants to see all the files uploaded by user, you just need to make a database query and show them in a grid. When user clicks on the file name, you can fetch the file from harddisk and allow it to download to admin.
If database change is not feasible, your task will be more difficult. You will have to query in your directory with username in all the files. You can make use of LINQ to make this task little easier to you. Once you have got all the list, show it to admin.
I would recommend you to save metadata about the file on the database (like original file name and username). Then you could use this metadata to find the files that the user have uploaded. Give the files a file name on disk that is based on a unique ID in the database table. That way a user can upload several files with the same name. Make sure that this folder is not located within you application so that they are accessible with a url for security reasons.
The most recommended way to achieve this is to use a database, it is same as a module of Gallery where a user has albums and some pictures in albums. Admin can view each user's album and pictures in the album. you have to introduce two tables in your database. I having the category information of files being uploaded (master table) and other table having the info about the files itself (details table).
The other way is to create a hierarchal folder directory for each user for file categories in your application and then recursively read the directories and fields and then list them up to show them to application users. this would be costly i guess when number of files will increase.

How to handle uploaded files on server farm

We have a asp.net website which allows users to upload files. Currently we do this by filestream. User clicks a button and we create the folder under site root> downloads > folder-idofuser > filename. Is there a better way than this. ie all files in a specific location outsite application ???. Paths are not stored in the database for access we just list the files in the relative folder on the file stream. Maybe we should do it different any advice?
They can upload as many files as they want. and presently we get about 30,000 per month. Due to our folder structure we are now experiencing slowness on the folder so we archived folders over 6 months old to a new location on the hd. Lots of files and was ok at the start but now with over 600gigs worth it a bit of a nightmare. Still leaves hundreds of thousands of folders under 1 folder.
I have read lots and lost of articles and questions im still not sure whats the best thing to do see 2 examples:
Looked at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/810215/best-practice-checks-when-allowing-users-to-upload-files-to-a-web-application
and Managing user-uploaded files with an ASP.NET website and Visual Studio
Now we are planning on moving from current in house hosting to a server farm. This seems very expensive when having so many files as we do. Should we have 2 servers 1 for applications/ websites and one for files and database. or would one suffice. obviously money is a big part of the equations but, trying to get a good idea as to whats best for the pound etc. any good ones please advise. And how should we store the files and access them. should we use sub domains etc and how.
Hope the questions not to boring, thanks all in advance
Isn't it better to save the files on the server with unique names (Guid) and save the path to the database.
This way you only need to query your database which is realy fast and not loop through all your files on your system.
And when someone requests the file just give it to the user. This could be realy fast i think. This way you can also have a script that will run and archive your files every month or day. And set a flag in the record that it is being archived with the new path to the file. This can be done automatically every night.

Handling file uploads in Drupal

I've been messing around a bit with various solutions to what I would see as a fairly common problem, but I've not yet been able to solve it in a satisfactory way.
What I wish to achieve is some kind of functionality where a user can upload new files, or select existing files to reuse them.
What I've been using so far is a combination of the filefield, filefield_sources, imce and ckeditor modules. I guess ckeditor isn't really important for the solution, but I need to be able to embed images from the archive somehow, and this is done with IMCE . Since I do not want everything to be accessible from the filebrowser I created a subdirectory and set full access to it in the IMCE settings, lets call it default/files/site
This worked fine as long as all filehanding was done through IMCE, but when I uploaded files directly from the filefield my files ended up in the default/files root, so I set up folders for my fields, for example default/files/site/movies in a field that allowed the .flv format. This worked fine to, as long as I didn't try to access the files through IMCE. It appears the folders created by filefield are not accessible from IMCE?
I'm also in a position where I need to support large uploads (200MB+), but from my experience in other projects, allowing file uploads through FTP is usually a life-saver, but from what I understand IMCE won't support files not uploaded through Drupal in some way, since they are not present in the database (giving the message: The selected file could not be used because the file does not exist in the database.)
I'm aware that I don't really have a clear question to my problem, but somehow I need to figure this out pretty fast. How would I preferably solve this? I'm aware that I'm not the first to have this problem, but I have not yet been able to find a nice and stable solution. What am I missing?
Also check this thread (http://drupal.org/node/438940) and the reference to John Locke's work at: http://www.freelock.com/blog/john-locke/2010-02/using-file-field-imported-files-drupal-drush-rescue
Well, I'm not personally familiar with IMCE off of the top of my head, but if you need files that have been uploaded via ftp to be added to the files tables, then my impulse would be to write a small module which would then allow the user to click a button and start off a batch process. (This is me assuming that you are using Drupal 6, as the batch api doesn't exist in 5.)
Said batch process would then iterate over all of the files in the appropriate directory, which I would assume you had uploaded the files to, use file_copy() (from Drupal's file API) to copy the files to default/files/site, and then would add said files to the files table, which is actually quite simple with drupal_write_record().
It might not even need to use the batch api - it somewhat matters if you're just uploading 10-30 really big files, or 200-300 MB files.
For using the batch api, I'd look at http://drupal.org/node/180528 - this has a fairly basic example of how the batch api works, which basically consists of telling the api that you want to keep calling function_a, and then inside of function_a setting your progress in the context array until you're done, at which time the batch process finishes. Then you just have whoever uploads the files via ftp to hit a button on the website to move and register the files.

Resources