Does Paperclip scans the files for errors, malicious software, viruses before uploading to database? If no, what are the viable solutions.
And, is it better to first create a separate folder for each user before they upload files and store in their respective folders? What are the merits and demerits of it? Is it possible to specify this with Paperclip?
Thanks
Re viruses etc, this might be useful - Rails / Heroku - How to anti-virus scan uploaded file?
Re storing each user's files in a seperate folder: the conventional way would be to store every FILE in a separate folder, and then link the files to the user via the database (eg a user_id field on the file records). As far as merits and demerits go, besides it not being conventional, one thing to bear in mind would be that if a user's files are stored in a single folder, then if they upload a two files with the same name then the second would overwrite the first (unless of course you put them in separate folders within the user's folder). This could be a good thing or bad thing depending on your requirements.
BTW - a slightly pedantic note: files aren't uploaded to the database (at least not normally) - they are uploaded to a filesystem, and a corresponding record is created in the database. The files don't go into the database (as i say, usually: it is possible to store files as blobs in the DB but it's not good practise and not usual).
Related
I'm developing a MVC5 web app, hosted through azure, that lets you manage your movies (it's just for myself at the moment). I'm trying to find a way to scan a local folder on the users pc for a list of file names. I do realise the security/permissions issues I might run into. I do not need the file uploaded, only the full file name.
It would work by the user being able to select a folder where they store their movies and it will take in all the file names, including the ones in any sub directories.
I tried a multiple file upload form but quickly ran into issues with the max request limit which I tried messing around with but it proved redundant in the end. I can settle for the user selecting multiple files but would rather it done the directory way.
I know this might prove impossible in the end but any help would be greatly appreciated.
I got an app I'm working on that uses static data from a sqlite database to do various things, While I only need read only access to the database, depending on the episode they pick from the first screen I want it to use a different database file and I want the list of available episodes to be updateable on the fly. and I got help to get the list of available episodes updated, and the proper content downloaded and stored in separate folders, So I know I could when the episode is selected delete the sql file in the documents folder and copy in the new one each time and that would work well enough for what I'm trying to do. but it seems like a bit much extra work to have to check for file, delete file, copy in new one. then open it from there each time the user wants to pick a different episode. and I don't want to put all the sql files together as that will be a bigger hassle then the first route especially if this app stays around long enough to have a long list of episodes.
so my question here is: can I get at least read-only access to an sql file that I've downloaded (or one in the bundle for testing) with out having to first copy it to the documents? and if so how would i open the file?
Can I get at least read-only access to an SQL file that I've downloaded (or one in the bundle for testing) without having to first copy it to the documents directory?
Yes. Files in the app bundle are readable (if they weren't, there would be no point in storing files in the bundle).
And if so, how would I open the file?
It's not clear what you're asking here - if you want to perform SQL queries on the file, you should use the sqlite3 library which is available on iOS.
I need to upload multiple files on my website.
But I need not just a form for uploading multiple files, I need to upload whole directories.
How's this possible for the minimalist?
Yours, Joern.
According to my somewhat limited knowledge this is not possible, only file transfer is possible, not directories.
Here are some workarounds, based on discussion on Velocity Reviews and another discussion:
upload a zip, which you unzip at the server side
upload directories over ftp (web page can be a front end to this)
upload files one by one
I would go either for zip or ftp. Note: someone might have produced a gem that enables uploading directories (I know nothing of such thing, but I will be happy to find out, if there is).
Adding another option to the list provided by Sorrow:
upload via REST/JSON
OK, this is a partial solution, but it does give you the opportunity to write a script that reads your directory and POSTS to your website.
I would like to create a simple file repository in Ruby on Rails. Users have their accounts, and after one logs in they can upload a file or download files previously uploaded.
The issue here is the security. Files should be safe and not available to anyone but the owners.
Where, in which folder, should I store the files, to make them as safe as possible?
Does it make sense, to rename the uploaded files, store the names in a database and restore them when needed? This might help avoid name conflicts, though I'm not sure if it's a good idea.
Should the files be stored all in one folder, or should they be somewhat divided?
rename the files, for one reason, because you have no way to know if today's file "test" is supposed to replace last week's "test" or not (perhaps the user had them in different directories)
give each user their own directory, this prevents performance problems and makes it easy to migrate, archive, or delete a single user
put metadata in the database and files in the file system
look out for code injection via file name
This is an interesting question. Depending on the level of security you want to apply I would recommend the following:
Choose a folder that is only accessible by your app server (if you chose to store in the FS)
I would always recommend to rename the files to a random generated hash (or incremntally generated name like used in URL shorteners, see the open source implementation of rubyurl). However, I wouldn't store them in a database because filesystems are built for handling files, so let it do the job. You should store the meta data in the database to be able to set the right file name when the user downloads the file.
You should partition the files among multiple folders. This gives you multiple advantages. First, filesystems are not built to handle millions of files in a single folder. If you have operations that try to get all files from a folder this takes significantly more time. If you obfuscate the original file name you could create one directory for each letter in the filename and would get a fairly good distributed number of files per directory.
One last thing to consider is the possible collision of file names. A user should not be able to guess a filename from another user. So you might need some additional checks here.
Depending on the level of security you want to achieve you can apply more and more patterns.
Just don't save the files in the public folder and create a controller that will send the files.
How you want to organise from that point on is your choice. You could make a sub folder per user. There is no need to rename from a security point of view, but do try to cleanup the filename, spaces and non ascii characters make things harder.
For simple cases (where you don't want to distribute the file store):
Store the files in the tmp directory. DON'T store them in public. Then only expose these files via a route and controller where you do the authentication/authorisation checks.
I don't see any reason to rename the files; you can separate them out into sub directories based on the user ID. But if you want to allow the uploading of files with the same name then you may need to generate a unique hash or something for each file's name.
See above. You can partition them any way you see fit. But I would definitely recommend partitioning them and not lumping them in one directory.
I'm having problems with deciding where to store files uploaded by user in my asp.net mvc application.
I've been using asp classic for about 10 years now, and always stored my files on disc at the site, and storing filename and folders in database.
How would you guys approach this problem?
Having them in database, and might get performance issues there? or leave it the way I always done it, and might get problems with "sync" filesystem and db?
I must have some sort of relational info in the database, so I cant store them just on disc
I'm using sql 2005 atm, and I read somewhere that sql 2008 has some sort of datacolumn now that just stores a "pointer" (like the text-datatype) to a file on disc, is that the way to go?
In some way, database is called a database for some reason, so not sure why invent wheel again? :)
Any pointers or ideas would be appreciated, I guess I'm just wondering about problems I might run into if I go with the database-approach
/M
You could use the special App_Data folder to put uploaded files and store the path into the database. If you go with SQL Server 2008 then you could take a look at the FILESTREAM type.
I'm not sure if your web application is load balanced or not, for the file management systems I've built in the past, I have always stored my files on a SAN or a network shared drive so they are accessible to all web/app servers. In addition, rather than storing the files as is, I always change the file name and type before I persist them on the file system (I typically use a GUID as the file name and a random file extension). Lastly, I would store the original file information in the database the files can be moved or copied logically rather than physically.