Message with multiple attachments

Rails
1

Hello.

I am implementing a system that allows you to add multiple attachments
to a message. This raises a problem tho.

If I try to upload the attachments BEFORE adding the message (thus
creating an ID to relate the attachment to), I will need to find a way
to store the attachments on a temporary way that will allow me to attach
one another later. But, if the user closes the browser before inserting
the message, I get temporary and unecessary files lying around. If I
only allow one attachment at a time, this can also raise a few problems:

  1. You add a 20mb attachment and then your form doesn’t validate, wich
    means you’ll have to upload again
  2. You will have to edit that message to attach more files (wich, IMHO,
    doesn’t make much sense).

What would you do and how?

Thanks in advance,
André

2

Hi André,

André Medeiros wrote:

But, if the user closes the browser before inserting
the message, I get temporary and unecessary files lying around.

What makes you want to treat the files differently than any other
session
data? I’m new to this and about to jump off on my first ‘real’ project
(i.e., will be deployed for use). Like yours, one piece of my app’s
functionality is to allow the transfer of files to the user. I’d
planned to
treat the files more-or-less as ‘children’ that may need to be cleaned
up
just like all the other contents of any abandoned ‘cart.’ It sounds
like
maybe there’s something I need to be thinking about that I’m not. Any
help
will be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Bill

3

Bill W. wrote:

Hi André,

André Medeiros wrote:

But, if the user closes the browser before inserting
the message, I get temporary and unecessary files lying around.

What makes you want to treat the files differently than any other
session
data? I’m new to this and about to jump off on my first ‘real’ project
(i.e., will be deployed for use). Like yours, one piece of my app’s
functionality is to allow the transfer of files to the user. I’d
planned to
treat the files more-or-less as ‘children’ that may need to be cleaned
up
just like all the other contents of any abandoned ‘cart.’ It sounds
like
maybe there’s something I need to be thinking about that I’m not. Any
help
will be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Bill

I believe that files in this case cannot be treated as items that are
added to a cart. That’s because adding an item to a cart takes only one
click, 2secs waiting and maybe a 70kb download of new HTML. Uploading a
file takes a little longer. That’s what worries me.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks in advance,
André

4

Hi André,

I don’t think I’m grokking your app. If the file already exists in the
file
system, I’m not understanding why I wouldn’t just put the {path}file
name to
be transferred in the ‘cart.’ Why do I need to have the contents of the
file in memory before the user commits to the transfer?

Users expect downloads to take time so my strategy is to do as little
processing as possible in the pre-click state. The only thing the
send_file() method needs is the {path}filename. It even gives me the
option
to read the whole file into memory prior to transmit_start or to stream
it.
Have you done a spike with send_file() yet? What need(s) does it not
satisfy?

I hope it’s clear that I’m really interested in your answer. Like I
said, I
share the need to transfer (a) file(s) to the user and I was under the
impression from reading the send_file() documentation that it was going
to
be pretty easy. If I’m wrong, it would be great to find out sooner
rather
than later :wink: Any info is greatly appreciated.

Best regards,
Bill

----- Original Message -----
From: “André Medeiros” [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2006 12:23 PM
Subject: [Rails] Re: Message with multiple attachments