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File Management Over Web/Network

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  • 02-11-2013 2:01pm
    #1
    Mmmm_Lemony
    Registered Users Posts: 891 ✭✭✭


    Working on my 4th year project (Final year of degree). I won't go into the boring details but part of the solution involves managing files. Files would be stored remotely, either on the web or a networked server.

    As needed the files (all possible types) would be pulled down locally for manipulation. Then uploaded again. This needs to very be secure. It's for an internal system (Windows 7/8). The server is likely to be linux. As it's internal anything goes in terms of language framework etc...

    I have a lot of functionality elsewhere that will need the guts of my time to implement, so I'm hoping to find a simple, secure framework or file transfer api to use.

    I've looked into obvious ones like FTP and so far this seems like the right option. I've looked into using a blob object too (DB will be mySQL), but my worry is this will be very slow to download and upload.

    Hoping to find a few possibilities that people here have worked with outside of FTP and blob, and how it panned out for them.

    I would normally approach a project supervisor for these types of questions but unfortunately there is an industrial action taking place, preventing them from replying.

    Disclaimer: Not looking for code, just a little direction to a few possible options.


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    #2
    oscarBravo
    Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 28,793 Mod ✭✭✭✭oscarBravo


    FTP is anything but secure. I'd look into scp, especially with a Linux server.


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    #3
    Talisman
    Registered Users Posts: 6,132 ✭✭✭Talisman


    What you are describing is a distributed document management system. There are a number of open source products which you could look at to see how they tackled the issue, e.g. Alfresco and Nuxeo.

    WebDAV is the protocol you should consider. It allows you to map the server location as a local drive which allows you to work with the remote files as if they were on your machine. It allows file locking so multiple users can share a file (read access) but only one can edit it (write access) at a time. It uses ports 80 and 443 so firewall restrictions are not a consideration. It's a cross platform solution as Windows and Mac OS X have native client support - you are simply mapping a network drive as far as the OS is concerned. This leaves you with only the server to implement.


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