Rackspace cloud files client side uploads - ruby-on-rails

I am using Rackspace cloud files as my CDN. My app is image heavy and right now, all image are being uploaded to my server and from there being uploaded to cloud files.
This I think is redundant and it's waste of my server resources. I think a better solution would be for me to give the client a URL to upload and then client can upload to the URL (bypassing my server completely) and telling the server everythings done.
I am wondering if this is possible using cloud files and how it can be done. I am using Rails on server side btw.
Thanks

You may use the FormPost feature of Rackspace Cloud Files.
FormPost lets you offer your website audience a way to upload objects to your Cloud Files account through a web form.

A CDN Container has four URIs associated with it: iOS Streaming, Streaming, HTTPS and HTTP.
Can't you use the, say, HTTPS URI to allow your clients to upload directly to the Container?

Related

Access MP3 files on server from iOS.

I'm building a streaming app similar to pandora. However right now I'm storing all my files on http and accessing them with urls. Is there an alernative to this because all the files are in the public html folder? For example how does apps like pandora or spotify pull files off their servers. I'm new to web severs and not sure where to ask this question. I have a centos server on vps hosting with apache, MySQL, http, ftp.
You just need to provide the content as a bit stream rather than a file download. The source of that data to send as a stream can be stored as binary data in a BLOB column in a database or as a regular file on a non-public part of the file system. It really does not mater which one you use.
Storing them in the database gives your app a bit easier access and makes the app more portable since it is not restricted the file system level permissions.
The fact you currently have the files in a public folder is not really that critical of an issue since you are making them available for download. You would just need to make sure you have an authentication requirement if you want to restrict who can access them.

Secure Upload (SSL) a file in to Amazon S3 in c#

Currently I am working on a MVC application, I want to upload a file(s) to amazon s3 using SSL from c#. (Sometimes i need to upload using SSL and some other times without SSL based on boolean value).
Thanks in Advance..
All S3 endpoints support both HTTP and HTTPS so it shouldn't be a problem to use either one, based on your use case.
You can see the full list of endpoints on:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/rande.html#s3_region

Azure - uploading files to blob storage via shared hosting

Im struggling to find an answer to this. I have a website that is deployed in a shared hosting environment. I want to allow people to upload files to my azure blob storage account.
I have this working locally, using the storage emulator, however when I publish the site I get a Security Exception.
Is this actually possible under a shared hosting envrionment ?
Cheers
A bit more detail would help, in understanding how these uploads are taking place. That said, I'll make the assumption that people are uploading directly to Blob Storage, and not through your Website (or Web Service).
To allow direct uploads, you need to provide either a public blob or container (which everyone in the world can see), or create a temporary Shared Access Signature (SAS) on a specific blob or container, that grants access for a short time window.
If your app is Silverlight, then you are probably running into a cross-domain issue (and you'll need to correct that with an access policy).
If you provide more details around the way uploads are being sent, as well as the client and server technology, I can edit my answer to be more specific.

How does Dropbox upload data to its servers?

just recently I was thinking and wondered, how does Dropbox upload my files to its S3 storage and how might that one be organized?
Let's just completely forget about the sync aspect for a second and scale the problem down to one S3 bucket.
Say, in that bucket's root directory you have lots of folders, each belonging to an arbitrary user.
Now if that user wants to upload a file to his folder... how does that happen internally? I mean, Dropbox can't just store the Amazon S3 access credentials/keys hard-coded into the application (be it on ios or windows) as it might get reverse-engineered and thus exposed.
Any thoughts on this?
Thanks!
Some guys from EADS did reengineering on Dropbox, the presentation slides are available for download: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF
DROPBOX SOFTWARE SECURITY
In the same way websites don't allow users to directly access their databases but rather provide interfaces that can control permissions and handle authentication, I'm sure Dropbox has some kind of application that the client on your computer interacts with. Their server daemon will have permissions to write to the disk, but your computer has to go through it (and it's security procedures) before anything your computer sends is written.

Securing S3 via your own application

Imagine the following use case:
You have a basecamp style application hosting files with S3. Accounts all have their own files, but stored on S3.
How, therefore, would a developer go about securing files so users of account 1, couldn't somehow get to files of account 2?
We're talking Rails if that's a help.
S3 supports signed time expiring URLs that mean you can furnish a user with a URL that effectively lets only people with that link view the file, and only within a certain time period from issue.
http://www.miracletutorials.com/s3-amazon-expiring-urls/
If you want to restrict control of those remote resources you could proxy the files through your app. For something like S3 this may defeat the purpose of what you are trying to do, but it would still allow you to keep the data with amazon and restrict access.
You should be careful with an approach like this as it could cause your ruby thread to block while it is proxying the file, which could become a real problem with the application.
Serve the files using an EC2 Instance
If you set your S3 bucket to private, then start up an EC2 instance, you could serve your files on S3 via EC2, using the EC2 instance to verify permissions based on your application's rules. Because there is no charge for EC2 to transfer to/from S3 (within the same region), you don't have to double up your bandwidth consumption costs at Amazon.
I haven't tackled this exact issue. But that doesn't stop me from having an opinion :)
Check out cancan:
http://github.com/ryanb/cancan
http://railscasts.com/episodes/192-authorization-with-cancan
It allows custom authorization schemes, without too much hassle.

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