download all

[nthieberger]

Can we add some functionality to allow authorised users to select essence files in a checkbox and then download a group of files. Maybe also a 'select all' button. This is especially important for items with many essence files.

[silviapfeiffer]

Hmm, John and I discussed this. It's actually a really risky feature to implement. What I would need to do is to tar up all the files that belong to an item, then download that file, then remove that file. The risk that we are going to end up with huge temporary files that people will take days to download is really high. It would allow users to easily bring the website down.

How many such request are we getting? Can we just do it by hand on the server and send a file?

[nthieberger]

We don't want to do this by hand! I don't know how many requests we will
get (which is why we need a log of activity so we can see what is happening
in the use of Nabu), but we do need to allow users to download whatever is
accessible. Can there be a time limit, say that the current download will
be terminated if it fails after x hours? Is there a way of identifying the
user's bandwidth so that, if it is not very fast, a warning can be given
that they should only download e.g., mp3 and not wav versions of files?

On 16 February 2013 22:10, Silvia Pfeiffer [email protected] wrote:

Hmm, John and I discussed this. It's actually a really risky feature to
implement. What I would need to do is to tar up all the files that belong
to an item, then download that file, then remove that file. The risk that
we are going to end up with huge temporary files that people will take days
to download is really high. It would allow users to easily bring the
website down.

How many such request are we getting? Can we just do it by hand on the
server and send a file?

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/302#issuecomment-13648178.

[silviapfeiffer]

I'm not concerned about individual items. Over the weekend we've implemented download of individual items for any authorized user now, so that's possible now.

What I am concerned about, though, is "download all" on an item or worse, a collection. This bug requested a simple means to download multiple files and that's what will be extremely hard to implement to make sure a single user can't take down the WebSite. It's like re-implementing Dropbox.

[nthieberger]

OK, I see the problem with downloading collections. 'Download All' for an item would be ok though? I'm thinking of items with lots of essence files (e.g. http://catalog.paradisec.org.au/collections/NT1/items/98001), where it would be useful if a user could tick checkboxes for files required then download all of them at once rather than singly.

[silviapfeiffer]

The problem is not in collections or items. It's in how to download more than one file in a way that won't take down the Website. We can download every file individually (a connection each), but then an item such as the one you're linking to will take up all the open connections and nobody else will be able to connect to the Website. We can instead create a zip-file of all the files that a user wants, but then it will take several minutes to prepare that download, by which time the user would usually have moved on and lost the connection to the application.

How often does this happen?

[silviapfeiffer]

@nthieberger I've discussed this with John. What we suggest is to allow an administrator to schedule the creation of a zip-file of all the essence files in an item or in a collection. This tarball will then get created over night and we can then send an email to the administrator where the file can be downloaded from.

Would that be sufficient?

[nthieberger]

Not really. We are getting requests from users to be able to download items and to assign download rights to colleagues. We don't want to have to handle each request ourselves, but should allow authorised users to do the work. A user should not have to download each file individually. Can we please have a function that allows all essence files in an item to be selected and downloaded by the authorised user?

[johnf]

Close in favour of #758