Uploading large files

[AMV]

The site I'm currently building is designed to allow people to upload rather large files to our server (potentially as high as 50 megs). Unfortunately, we're currently using HTTP file uploads with the Type="File" form element and PHP's uploaded file functions. We need to keep a simple, web-based interface that allows people to directly upload the files, but the HTTP transfers seem to become unreliable after they reach a few megs. Sometimes we can get them to work but not often enough to be a viable solution.

Does anyone have any good methods for directly uploading large files through a web site reliably?

[planetsim]

In a web interface, theres no way. I think the biggest any file to be uploaded using a webinterface like you want to must be done in the ftp program you use.

My reasons for this is.
1) Page load time will be very slow
2) Other browsers will work extremely slow for the user

[daedlus]

There are some things you can do to enable very big uploads and downloads through http. That is if you don't plan on people uploading pictures that are automatically added to the page.

You wouldn't want to do that since there are people like me that have really big pictures, as in that 14 meg picture taken from a plane over the WTC. They could easily upload it through a high-bandwidth connection, considering they have it they probably do have one, and that would definitlybog down your site.

But, if you don't want to do that, there is a value in PHP.INI that lets you the "MAX_UPLOAD_SIZE" variable. Not sure if it's "exactly" that, but just run a searchfor upload in the file and that'll come up.

I have a file that I made with a friend and it lets you upload files, surf directories, create directories and delete files, all through an HTTP interface. Also, I maintain an HTTP upload service on my computer for when my brother and friends need upload big files, as in.bin files and so on. I just set the upload limit to 1 gig. 🙂

If you want, email me and I'll see if I can uncover that php code I was talking about. I'm at school now and my telnet service is closed and I don't have ftp that goes to my docroot.

I hope this help, I'll post the main form and stuff as soon as I get it.

Regards,
Daedlus

[AMV]

We've configured PHP to what we need already; we set the max upload size, increased the timeout length, and increased the script execution time, and the memory limit. Everything should be in place, but we find the script occasionally dying on large uploads before its timeout is reached.

So any input on how to get around this instability even though everything is theoretically set up to handle it would be great. Thanks!

[scoppc]

Well, I am really sure about that 50 Megs ... but you can try to use FTP functions in PHP.

[daedlus]

There, had to dig it up, but here it is:

<form enctype="multipart/form-data" action="$_SERVER[PHP_SELF]" method="post">
Send this file: <input name="userfile" type="file">
<input type="submit" value="Send File" />
</form>

That's what I use and a lot of scripts to check all the data and so on.