RE: Big question about databases...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------- Disclaimer: The information contained in this email is intended only for the use of the person(s) to whom it is addressed and may be confidential or contain legally privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient you are hereby notified that any perusal, use, distribution, copying or disclosure is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error please immediately advise us by return email at postmaster@normandy.com.au and delete the email document without making a copy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------- Nathanael, I've been doing some work on this myself and you've probably seen my opinions about using files with just pointers in a DB. I have a few questions for you and others on this list as to how they would handle such a document repository. 1. I remember reading somewhere about limits to the numbers of files for a directory... something to do with node space? We plan to have 1000's maybe even 10,000 documents stored in our system... any problems with throwing all these in one directory? 2. To stop name clashing etc we rename the file to its ID number in the table so that "My Doc.pdf" become 1234 (the original name is stored in the DB). Plus we also store all the documents out of the web root. To deliver the file to the user we have deliver.php which sets some headers then does a readfile() on the file (if the user should be able to access the file). My problem is that this is a bit flakey (very client dependent) and i would like to some how set the filename for the file. Any ideas? I currently use.. Header("Content-Disposition: inline; filename='$original_filename'"); Header("Content-Description: Document Repository"); Header("Content-type: $mimetype"); $success = readfile($file); But this doesnt work all the time... and doesnt work at all for PDF's. One way to make this more reliable (and i've only tested various MSIE 4 -5.x so far) is to make the link contain a spurious get var like deliver.php?id=1234&output=.xls this works more often than not... any body have any more success further than these ideas? 3. Are there any security traps here... im pretty sure that by readfile() i dont have to worry about people uploading a .php since it wont run via readfile.. also since they are out of the webroot noone can find the secret dir a just grab em (i control the OS security) but any securtiy holes i may need to be concerned about? Also Nathanael im not sure what PUT does, im currently using POST.. should i be interested in PUT? mn -----Original Message----- From: Camelot, Nathanael (N.) [mailto:ncamelot@visteon.com] Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2000 11:44 PM To: 'php-windows@lists.php.net' Subject: Big question about databases... Hi all, here I am with a big question : On a Windows NT, Apache 1.3.12 & php4.01 intranet server, I need to have people upload files (pdf, xls, doc, jpeg...) (not more than 1Mo. each one) What do you all think is better : - Files are uploaded into a directory and I store filenames, paths ... in a database - Files are uploaded into the database, via BLOBs ? I think about putting datas into a directory, knowing my serveur isn't a killing supercalculator... Most of times the files will be downloaded, only a few people will a have a "PUT" right . Any answer would be appreciated. Nathanael "Artificial intelligence is nothing compared to natural stupidity" Someone