Part of the Rails application, I want to let the client keep the location string of a video file in the database at Heroku(My plan is to deploy the application at Heroku). So, when the client wants to access his or her file, the Rails application gets the location string from the database and opens the matching local file from his or her computer. Is this possible???
No. Just no.
To expand on Jordon's "Just no":
Heroku does not provide any local filesystem whatsoever. The only files you can count on being there, are what your uploaded application initially installs. The whole point of cloud-based automagically scaling solutions like Heroku is that (assuming you spring for the non-free plans) you get new resources spun up and down as needed. Obviously they won't have all the local files that your app has created.
HOWEVER...
There is a common solution to this, namely cloud *storage*. Store the files on Amazon S3 or some such, and it will be a bit more complex than local storage but still quite feasible... and cheap so long as you don't store huge files or a huge number of them.
-Dave
Thank you, Jordon and Dave.
I apologize if I am unclear. My question was to access client's local file system, not the Heroku's. I wonder if your answer still sticks to 'NO'.
S3 is not an option for me right now, because the application would require user to save the video clip and get ready for another clip in a matter of 20-30 seconds. Also, the application would be used in an area where the internet speed is not that high (about 128 kbps). So, I want to minimize the network traffic as much as possible.
Regards, Sagar
Dave Aronson wrote in post #1093867:
This is exactly what my "no, just no" referred to. And not for any more reason than it's a huge security risk that you should not throw you or your users into unless you absolutely know what you are doing and they absolutely understand the risk they are taking.
To elaborate there are other reasons why the no applies, but this is the only reason I care about.
Thank you both of you.
Regards, Sagar
Jordon Bedwell wrote in post #1093870:
You wish to keep the path of a file that exists on the user's local machine in your database in the cloud, and pass it back to the user?
I cannot begin to see how this would be possible unless your user had a server running on their localhost that could serve up the file.
Trying to set a URL like `file:///home/username/somefile` cannot work when you set it in a web page:
<a href="file:///home/username/somefile">somefile</a>
does not work when your web page is being served from elsewhere. Try it. There are extremely good reasons for this.
Depending on what you’re trying to do there might be some java or flash applet that will let you do that.
Theoretically you could just store the path and tell the applet to open that file.
Your users would have to agree to install the applet and understand the risks.
I came across this FileSystem API in the DOM, that allows clients to store and retrieve files from user's Sandbox. I have not had a chance to play with it yet, but seems like a bright light to me.
Regards, Sagar
tamouse mailing lists wrote in post #1093872:
