Re: Delivering large files via PHP (>300MB)

On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 13:22:52 -0800 (GMT-08:00), Bruce Douglas <bedouglas@earthlink.net> wrote: > you might also look into 'bit torrent'... You must have missed the part about 'cannot have this file in a "public" location'. > Just thought I would pick the collective brain on this one. I have > a requirement to deliver a large EXE file to customers after they > order. The file is just under 400 MB in size and, because they have > just purchased it, I obviously cannot have this file in a "public" > location on the web server that someone could browse to. > > I can push the file out quite easily using a modified header and a > simple script to check if they can download it or not, but with > such a large file a significant number of web browsers fail to > obtain the entire EXE before closing - or any other number of > factors kick into play (their PC resets, ISP disconnects, Windows > crashes, etc). Use set_time_limit(0); to prevent the timeout. ignore_user_abort() is pretty handy too. If that doesn't work you might give them authenticated http access with temporary passwords. You can have the usernames and passwords in a db and pass the proper auth headers with PHP. > Some browsers support resuming download, but not when the file has > been sent via the headers I use, also FTP is not an option as I > cannot create and destroy FTP users on the server easily (or for > that matter assume the customer knows how to perform FTP > operations). I feel your pain. > I'm also aware that it's not such a hot idea to lock-up Apache for > the time it takes to download the whole file, especially with a > large number of users doing this. Apache 2 is pretty good with multiple threads from what I hear. I use it but not in a production environment. -- Greg Donald Zend Certified Engineer http://gdconsultants.com/ http://destiney.com/