Upload Bar : File Upload

jkeppens

Okay, in the 4 years I program sites in PHP I've never seen it done, so it's probably not possible, but I'll ask it anyway :

When I upload a rather big file, the browser just starts working doing nothing and it's not a pretty face. What I would love is some sort of status bar which shows the percentage of the upload that's done.

I've done this in ASP with an active X object, I've done this in JSP/Servlets/Struts, and what basically happens is that some sort of listener checks a) how much of the HTTP request has been processed and b) how much it must process in total.

If anyone has done it in PHP or has ideas on how to do it, I'll be willing to hear about it!

Jeroen

suntra

Personnally, I would say that it's simply impossible ! But I may be wrong...

_0_05_

well, perhaps you could write a simple javascript that checks how much of the file has been uploaded (simply by file size) and make php pass javascript a total file size and the JS code will compare the two, and make the status bar so large. Then make a window pop-up in the middle of the screen informing the user of how much has been uploaded?

jkeppens

How would I get ... ?

a) the filesize
b) the bytes allready transmitted

I just found in the manual under Apache Specific functions :

"apache_lookup_uri" it contains a field "bytes sent". Anyone worked with this? Is this a way to look at, or not?

_0_05_

cant you just access the directory that php uses to temporarily store the files?

suntra

I think a PHP script executes itself AFTER the file has been uploaded.

jkeppens

1) tmp folder

as far as I recall the file is copied in the tmp folder under a unique name. This means you don't know which file in the folder is yours being uploaded. Not?

2) php after file executed :

That's correct. You need a second page which monitors the first. What happens is that an HTTP request is posted to the server with in its datastream the file that's uploaded. So what you need in the second file is

a) to check the total size of the http request
b) the number of bytes allready processed

Using these 2 figures you can calculate the percentage done.

That's why I thought about that Apache function, but I'm not really sure what it does... Is it for checking a stream in process, or just some file on the server. If you know what I mean.

JEroen