File downloads and Macs

Anon

I built a file-upload utility that allows outside customers to upload PDF's, Quark files, .SIT files, and other such mac-native filetypes to our organisation.

Here's the problem:

Once a native file has been uploaded, the internal users (all on Mac's) have errors downloading. The error is the file they download is converted into ascii text, or is just garbage.

Since I don't have a mac at my disposal, I can't test this out for myself. The users are all command+clicking (equiv. of right-click + save-as), and saving the files with their given filenames.

Mac files carry extra filetype data, so they don't need file extensions (a pain in the ass if you ask me)...

Anyone have an idea why uploading in a browser (all the php I'm using is an upload form w/ enctype, and copy() to move the data around; nothing fancy) and downloading in a browser would be causing this problem?

Thanks!

Chad Edge

brandonschnell

mac native filetypes may not upload properly unless they're binhexed.

mac files are recognized by other operating systems as two files, a data fork & resource fork. if i remember correctly, on upload only the one fork will be sent. on download the browser uses the mime type to create and attach a resource fork telling the Mac OS what program to open certain files with. if the mime type is set properly and the browser is setup properly then files that only really need the data fork can be downloaded and uploaded (.pdf, .txt, .hqx, etc)

so to answer your question .txt files should work fine, but any mac specific files may not without going through binhex (merges the two forks into one file).

Anon

Brandon, thanks for your help in this!

That's the answer I was looking for.

There's binhex proggies that the clients could use, correct?

That's the same line as doing a tarball, yes?

brandonschnell

http://download.cnet.com/downloads/1,10150,0-10000-103-0-1-7,00.html?tag=srch&qt=binhex&cn=&ca=10000

yeah, binhex is like tar. doesn't compress it, just makes everything into one file. typically users will use stuffit to compress files & folders then binhex to make it transferrable on the net and pcs. thats why you'll see a lot of downloads with the name of "program_name.sit.hqx".