I want to build a Website that has a number of video files,
What is the best way to do this?
Save Video file in database OR copy in a folder of the website?,
and we would be able to add files later
thanks
It depends; both methods have their advantages.
File system is easy to work with, it is easy to manually access and manipulate the files and it requires no database and no coding to read and write from the database. Setting up proper access rights to allow uploads of new files can be a bit tricky though, and if there are large amounts of files performance might suffer.
Database requires more coding, and you won't be able to -for example- preview a video file just by double clicking it.
I'd say the scale and ambition of your project, alongside your own knowledge, should decide. If you want to keep it simple, go with file system. Aiming high and know how to do it? -Use a database.
Or start with file system and move to database if and when you feel it is motivated.
Related
i'm asp.net beginner and currently working in "upload download file" project with asp.net and vb.net as code behind language (like skydrive's web).
what i'm want ask is about upload file in server, must we store path file, size, accessed or created date into database? as we know we can use directory listing in system.io.
Thanks for your help.
You definetly want to store the path of the file. You want a way to find the file ;) Maybe later you will have multiple servers, replication or other fancy things.
For the rest, it depends a bit on the type of website. If it's going to get high traffic then store it in the database, this will limit the number of IO call (very slow). Also, it'll be a lot easier to handle sorting and queries. (sort by date, pull only the read onyl files, ...).
Database will also help if you want to show history or statistique.
You can save file in some directory and can save path of that file in database. You can also store size and created date of that file in DB. But storing a file in DB is a bit difficult. Rather than save file in Directory and save path of that file in DB
you could store the file information in a database to built some extra features like "avoid storing duplicate files", because you are having a faster search in the database! if you search the filesystem always a recursive function call get started
I saw this question:
ASP.NET File Upload: how can I make sure that an uploaded file is really a JPEG?
and similar questions about being sure of the file being uploaded through asp:FileUpload control in ASP.net is really image. But What If users upload virus-infected images? How can I be insured of the image files being uploaded via my ASP.net application does not affect the files in my web app folder and/or images uploaded by other users?
As long as you don't serve it back to anyone as anything other than an image (content-type) and never trying to execute (.exe) the file you'll be fine.
Most anti-virus software run whats known as an "on-access scan". That is, when a file is changed, it automatically scans that file.
So save that file to the file system and let your server's anti-virus software do the work for you.
I'll take what is likely a somewhat controversial position.
There is no way to know with 100% certainty what the intent of a file is, be it good or evil. It is impossible. AV scanners give you a slice of data but they can't give you 100% guarantees either. No one can.
Given this reality, you need to build your app assuming that all files uploaded are bad. Yes, scanning is still fine and will filter out a bunch of stuff. But it will never be 100%. Is it 99.999% or 20%? Who knows. Does it really matter?
I would build any app today assuming that all user supplied content is bad. Very bad. Hostile bad. Because eventually it will be if you make it. And when it is, you'll be ready for them...rather than all the people that have to rearchitect their app because they made bad assumptions early on.
With a bit more data about your exact concerns, I'd be happy to comment on them more specifically...
As a side note, In older version of IIS (6 or prior versions) It could be possible to change FileName to the real malicious file name after save the file with original filename. Which has possibility to be read and execute regularly by the server.
E.G. set the file name like: file.asp;.jpg or file.asp%00.jpg etc...
It also has a possibility to change target directory by manipulation of file name. Which is extremely dangerous
E.G. newfolder.asp::$Index_Allocation or etc...
There is also some new way of attacks. Read more here.
Before I attempt to program the following function myself, I wonder if something already exists.
What I would like to do is click an edit link on my website for a given document, and have that document launch in the native editor on my local machine (via a temporary file mechanism).
When I save the document in the native editor, the document is HTTP PUT back to the website. This can be accomplished by watching the file for writes, or watching the editor process for exit.
This way I can more easily edit documents on the web (instead of going through the download / edit / upload cycle).
My design would work as follows:
Register .webedit files on the local machine.
When a .webedit file is downloaded, launch webedit.exe with the file.
The file contains a URL (http://server/document) which is checked against a security database to ensure we're only opening allowed URLs.
The URL is downloaded to a temporary location.
The temporary file is launched in the native editor.
The file is watched for changes, and uploaded (HTTP PUT) on change detection (or when the editor is closed, if it's not a single-instance multiple-document editor).
Lots of FTP / SCP GUIs have this type of functionality, but I have not been able to find it for the web in general, or a shared library that allows you to plug in to this function.
Has anyone seen a program that does this?
SharePoint works like this.
It's great for managing shared documents in corporate environments.
Users can even checkout/checkin documents & the features are very extensible..you can customize pretty much anything if you know how.
Edit:
Since you're on Linux..i've heard that Alfreco is a great alternative.
I've never used it, but I know a couple organizations using it instead of SharePoint.
It integrates with Microsoft Office as well.
Also, it will definitely be cheaper.
I have a .jpg file which represents the current image from a webcam. User's will be downloading this file at an interval of once a second. Because there could be dozens of users reading it, this could be dozens of times a second (which is normal for any web server).
Problem is, this image is updated by a 3rd party application also once a second which "spiders" my local networks webcam portal image. This is so we can build our webcams into our current administration panel.
The problem I am already finding is ASP.net sometimes gets an error it can not access the file because it is open for write permissions by the bot. Likewise, the bot can not access it because IIS is feeding it to the user.
The bot uses io.streamwriter to save the data to the file, and my script uses Response.WriteFile to send the file to the script. (I need to use an actual ASP.net page with a JPG content-type that feeds the file to make sure only users with a active session can view the JPG).
My question is what is the best practices for this? I know why it's happening but what is the best resolution for this? Would storing as a BLOB in a database maybe be smarter since databases are created for concurrent read/writing already? Is there an easier way of doing this with a file I have not thought of yet?
Thanks in advance,
Anthony Greco
Using a BLOB will work if the readers use SNAPSHOT isolation model (SQL Server 2005 and up). See Download and Upload images from SQL Server via ASP.Net MVC for how to stream an image from a BLOB, and see Understanding Row Versioning-Based Isolation Levels for a lecture on SNAPSHOT.
But using a BLOB may be overkill, you could get away with something much simpler. For instance, if you only have one ASP.Net process, then you could have a global volatile variable for the current file name. The writer writes the JPG into a new file, and then updates the global 'current' file name with an Interlocked.CompareExchange operation (it has to be Compare because a newer writer might actually finish faster, outrun a previous writer, and you want to preserve the latest update). There are still some issues left to solve (find out the file name at startup, clean up old files etc) but they are all fairly ease to solve.
If you have a farm of servers, or multiple ASP.Net processes serving the site, then things could get complicated. I would still do a rotating file name and do a try-and-error approach (try to respond with newest file, fall back to previous older one if conflict is detected).
You could get the bot to write the data to a different filename and then do a delete and rename to the filename being served by ASP.Net. This should reduce the file lock time down to the time for a delete and rename to occur. To clarify:
ASP.Net serving image from "webcam.jpg"
bot writes image data to "temp.jpg"
when last image byte written, bot deletes "webcam.jpg" and renames "temp.jpg" to "webcam.jpg"
ASP.Net should check "webcam.jpg" exists, if not wait 10ms (or suitable small increment) and check again.
I'm building an app in ASP.NET that will store some pictures of objects. The pictures will be uploaded by suppliers and downloaded by subscribers. In between, they will have to be edited before becoming available to subscribers.
The editing involves creating a cropping path tightly around the object in the picture, in which some advanced desktop image software will have to be used I suppose.
My problem is in exchanging pictures between my ASP.NET app and the desktop software in a manner that is easy and transparent for the user.
I've done some thinking and I've come up with:
- Manually downloading and uploading the image (Not much user friendly...)
- An image editing program that can upload to a web service (Haven't found yet...)
- Develop a plug-in for an image editing program (Too advanced...)
I'd appreciate any suggestions you may have, thank you!
It sounds like you need some automation to move files between the web server and a file share. I am assuming that the number of images that need to be processed is pretty large, because if it's not, then the overhead of downloading/re-uploading each would not be that much.
So do the following:
1) Create an API for your web app that lists files that are available, or new files since some date/time, or files that have been marked as "new". The API should probably also allow marking a status on them (so you can tell it when you've finishing pulling something down, and it won't be offered again) if you don't want to trust date/time as an indicator of it being new.
2) Write an app (non-web) that runs on a schedule and uses this API to automatically download files to a shared filesystem area in your local network, and marks them as "downloaded"
The app should also monitor these files (the ones it downloaded & saved to your local share) for changes, and if changed, upload them back to your web app. To do this you may need to keep a database of filenames and modification dates/times.
This shouldn't be too hard to write in whatever language you are using for your web (assume c# or vb). By "API" I just mean, a web page that provides a list in a standardized format (e.g. json) that you can parse with your automation application, and another page that allows posting the file back for re-upload.
I'm assuming that the web server is not your own, or generally, you can't simply have it save the file uploads directly to some area where your image editors can access them. Otherwise you could just do that.
Meanwhile I came out with another possible solution.
I'm thinking of having our own windows app on the editor's computers. This app will be associated with a custom extension. When an editor downloads a file (with this extension) for editing, it will be opened in our application which in turn will open the image in some editor program.
This app will be monitoring the files for changes, and in such case, it will upload these images.
Any thoughts on this?