I have this ASP.NET web site that allows users to download program installation packages (just normal files). I want to be able to track when a download is completed (i.e. the file has been fully downloaded to the user's computer) and then invoke a Google Analytics script that reports a completed download as a 'Goal' (obviously, one of my goals is to increase file downloads).
The problem is that I need to support direct file URLs, as opposed to the "redirect page" solution. This is because a lot of traffic comes from software download sites that explicitly demand a direct file URL when submitting a product. Perhaps, they do their own file analysis (i.e. virus checking). But with this set of limitations, a typical scenario is:
The user visits my product listing on a software download site
The user clicks the "Download" button on this site
The "Download" page is typically a redirect that finally brings the user to my file via the direct URL I've initially submitted, i.e. http://www.ko-sw.com/somefile.exe
If under these conditions, an exact solution for monitoring is not possible, maybe there exists a workaround? What comes to my mind is temporarily storing the number of performed downloads on the server and then accessing an administrative page that somehow reports this number to Google Analytics and finally sets it back to zero. With this workaround, there is at least no need to try to attach a javascript handler to a non-HTML resource. But even then there are issues:
How to track if a download has completed?
How to track user geolocation and browser capabilities to make them further visible in the reports?
Thanks everybody in advance
According to awstats aborted download has http status code 206 so if you analyze server log for such code you can get those downloads that were not completed.
#Kerido ~ I'm curious what the business case is here. Are you trying to track installs or downloads? If installs, go with #SamMeiers solution.
However, if you're trying to track downloads, then the next question is what webserver base are you using? IIS? Apache? Something else?
In IIS, assuming you're using 7 (or later), you could (easily?) write a HttpHandler that checks for the last bytes of the file to be sent, and on that, record a log somewhere.
On Apache, just setup logging to tell you how many bytes were transferred (a trivial change in httpd.conf) and then parse the logs daily (awstats [amongst others] is pretty good for this, but you might have to write a sed/awk script) and find out how many full transfers were completed. Just depends on how thorough you're trying to be.
But I go back to, what's the business case for this? What does it matter if there were unfinished downloads?
It's possible to track links as a goal, which may be of use to you. However, this won't track when the download was completed.
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55529
Hope this helps.
Cheers
Tigger
I think the solution of #SamMeiers is very good but you may optimized by calling a web services after the installation complete but you might find a small problem if the use installing the app in an environment without internet but you might force to check if there is an internet or not.
You can create any trigger when you installation start as a start flag then when if finish check if the start flag exists then the app have been downloaded and installed also.
Related
As I understand it, when a link to a file is clicked in the browser, the file is silently downloaded to a temporary directory on the computer. Then the prompt is displayed which shows Open, Save, Cancel... Then if the user clicks Save, they are prompted to save it somewhere, and finally the file is basically transferred to that location when confirmed.
Assuming that is correct, I'm looking for a way to determine if the user actually downloaded the file. So basically determine if they clicked the Save button.
The bit of research that I've done leads me to believe this is not possible, because there is no standardized way of capturing that event, however I could be wrong. And the only possible solution I can come up with is to create an actual client application. Any thoughts on that?
Also, if there are any other off the wall ideas, I'm open to those as well.
And in case it makes a difference, I'm working within an ASP.NET environment.
How about turning this whole problem around and audit the file that actually being downloaded. You can turn on file/folder auditing and capture onlyt the success and failures of the IIS process. Then correlate the audit event with the pieces parts in the IIS log to get the particulars of who actually downloaded the file.
Just my $0.02 YMMV
Yes, I'm still using Classic ASP.
I'm about to write a script that checks a directory on the server, every 5 minutes, for newly uploaded photos, by my office, and to transfer the photos to another location. I'm using ASP and the FileSystemObject as the application and a Windows Schedule calls it.
What I would like to know is: If the user is sending 150 photos, by FTP, my application is not going to know if the user has finished uploading, or not. So then the application will go through the files one-by-one and transfer them. If my user has a slower connection than the speed of my application, the script may eventually come across the file that is currently being uploaded...
Will my application grab that file thinking it's complete or will it know that it's in the middle of upload and leave it alone? If it DOES grab it and transfers half a photo, how can I stop this from happening?
There is no good way to test for that, much depends on how the uploader is working.
Its highly unlikely that a file currently open for write access while the uploader creates it is going to allow your code to move it. An attempt to move it will result in a sharing violation or similar error. So protecting that section of code with an On Error Resume Next would do it. Have your code skip that file in the knowledge that it will be picked up again when the next poll comes round.
I currently have an asp.net page which a loggd in user goes to and theres a bunch of dynamically generated links to zip files that he or she owns and can downloads.
Currently they click download and I have no way of knowing if it completes succesfully etc so can't log it. I do log the attempt.
Is there are good download manager or solution I can use so they will have progress bars on the site, they can queue multiple ones up and most importantly I can track failed and successful downloads.
Thanks!
You cannot do this with pure asp.net and ajax as the browser sandbox doesn't give you access to the users computer to save the files.
So you need to use some sort of plugin.
Here's an ActiveX plugin that does what you want but it only works in IE and its expensive. I wouldn't go there...
As you are using Asp.net, a better option would be to write your own download utility in Silverlight.
Bare in mind though, that you'll probably annoy some of your users by forcing them to use your downloader and it will take considerable effort to get a high speed, robust downloader that can compete with the existing browser download managers out there. eg Free Download Manager
I have a hyperlink to an executable like so: Run Now
I'm trying to make the download dialog box appear without the save function as it is to only run only on the user's computer.
Is there any way to manipulate the file download dialog box?
FYI: Running on Windows Server '03' - IIS.
Please no suggestions for a WCF program.
Okay I found it for anyone stumbling upon this conundrum in the future.
Add the following tag to your head section: <meta name="DownloadOptions" content="nosave" /> and the file download dialog box will not display the "save" option.
For the user to not open/run but save replace "nosave" with "noopen"
Not unless you have some control over a user's machine. If your application can run on limited resources, you might want to consider doing it in Silverlight.
IMO, having a website launching an executable is a pretty bad idea.... even worst if that website is open to the general public (not on intranet). I don't know what that app is doing but it sure is NOT, 1) cross browser, 2) cross platform, and 3) safe for your users.
If you are on intranet, you might get away with giving the full server path (on a shared drive) to the executable and change security settings on your in-house machines.
Other than that, you won't succeed in a open environment such as the Internet.
From your comments, if the user downloading the file is the issue, then there's no way to get around it, as they have to download the file in order to be able to run it.
There's any number of ways to get around whatever you could manage in browser, from proxies like Fiddler intercepting the data, or lower level things like packet sniffing. Or even simply going into the browser's temp/cache folder and copying the file out once it's running.
You could probably get around most laymen by having a program that they can download that registers a file extension with Windows. Then the file downloaded from this site would have the URL of the actual data obfuscated somehow (crypto/encoding/ROT-13/etc). The app would then go and grab the file. The initial program could even have whatever functionality provided by what you want to download, but it needs the downloaded key.
But this is moving into the area of DRM and security by obscurity. If an attacker wants your file, and it's on the Internet, they will get the file.
I m developin an Online Examination System in C#.net and want to copy files on client machine as soon as exam starts, so that even if internet gets disconnected examinee can continue with test
You may wish to consider a client server solution, such as WPF or winforms as this is more suited to this type of development. You can use one click deployment to have this still launched from the web and updated on every run.
If you do decied to use asp.net this will result in a very javascript heavy site with a very slow load in the first page.
To do this you would load all your test qustions into a javascript datastructure on the first page, when every the user when to the next page you would need to, using javascript, collect all the answers and store in javascript. then rereender the entire page using your definitions of the test in javascript with no trip back to the server. then once the test was complete you would need to send your results back to the server, the internet must be active once you've compleated the test.
You'll have to create a download package and provide a link for the user to click to request the files. You can't force a download.
If your exam in all in one web page, you don't need to do anything. Once the page appears in the users browser, it has already been "copied locally".