NAME
Apache2::UploadProgress - Track the progress and give realtime feedback of file uploads
SYNOPSIS
In Apache:
PerlLoadModule Apache2::UploadProgress
PerlPostReadRequestHandler Apache2::UploadProgress
In your HTML form:
<script src="/UploadProgress/progress.js"></script>
<link type="text/css" href="/UploadProgress/progress.css"/>
<form action="/cgi-bin/script.cgi"
method="post"
enctype="multipart/form-data"
onsubmit="return startEmbeddedProgressBar(this)">
<input type="file" name="file"/>
<input type="submit" name=".submit"/>
</form>
<div id="progress"></div>
DESCRIPTION
This module allows you to track the progress of a file upload in order to provide a user with realtime updates on the progress of their file upload.
The information that is provided by this module is very basic. It just includes the total size of the upload, and the current number of bytes that have been received. However, this information is sufficient to display lots of information about the upload to the user. At it's simplest, you can trigger a popup window that will automatically refresh until the upload completes. However, popups can be a problem sometimes, so it is also possible to embed a progress monitor directly into the page using some JavaScript and AJAX calls. Examples using both techniques are discussed below in the EXAMPLES section.
EXAMPLES
Simple Popup Upload Monitor
The simplest way to add a progress monitor to your forms is to use the
popup technique. This will launch a popup window with a progress monitor
that will automatically refresh until the upload is complete. The popup
will use the XML method by default, and format the page using an
included XSL stylesheet (which can be customized to suit your needs). If
the browser does not support XML transformations, then content
negotiation will automatically fall back on a basic HTML page.
Here is what you need to do to get the popup technique working:
<script src="/UploadProgress/progress.js"></script>
<form action="/cgi-bin/script.cgi"
method="post"
enctype="multipart/form-data"
onsubmit="return startPopupProgressBar(this, {width : 500, height : 400})">
<input type="file" name="file"/>
<input type="submit" name=".submit"/>
</form>
So all we have done is add an onsubmit handler on the form that will pop up a new window and load the progress monitor. No changes need to be made to your CGI script, and nothing else needs to be done (apart from the standard Apache configuration directives listed in the SYNOPSIS above)
Embedded Upload Monitor
It is also possible to embed the progress monitor directly into the page
and it is just as easy:
<script src="/UploadProgress/progress.js"></script>
<link type="text/css" href="/UploadProgress/progress.css"/>
<form action="/cgi-bin/script.cgi"
method="post"
enctype="multipart/form-data"
onsubmit="return startEmbeddedProgressBar(this)">
<input type="file" name="file"/>
<input type="submit" name=".submit"/>
</form>
<div id="progress"></div>
The only difference is that we changed the onsubmit handler to call startEmbeddedProgressBar, and then we added and extra 'div' tag to indicate where we want the progress monitor to appear.
For complete runable examples please see the scripts in the examples directory.
APACHE CONFIGURATION
UploadProgressBaseURI
Change the location of the extra support files, so that you can
customize them to suit your needs.
UploadProgressBaseURI /CustomUploadProgess
Alias /CustomUploadProgess /var/www/customprogressfiles
Make sure that you copy all the support files found in the 'extra'
directory to this new location and then you can customize them to
your liking.
This currently only affects the urls used in the XML/XSL and HTML
mime handlers used in the popup progress monitor.
HANDLERS
handler
This handler should be run at the PerlPostReadRequestHandler stage,
and will detect whether we need to track the upload progress of the
current request. There are 5 ways for the handler to determine if
the upload progress should be tracked:
X-Upload-ID
There is an incoming header called X-Upload-ID which contains
the progess ID
X-Progress-ID
There is an incoming header called X-Progress-ID which contains
the progess ID
Query contains ID
The query portion of the URL consists of just a 32 character
hexadecimal string (for example
http://localhost/upload.cgi?1234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef)
Query contains progress_id
There is a query parameter in the query string called
progress_id, and it contains a 32 character hexadecimal number
(for example
http://localhost/upload.cgi?progress_id=1234567890abcdef12345678
90abcdef)
Query contains upload_id
There is a query parameter in the query string called upload_id,
and it contains a 32 character hexadecimal number (for example
http://localhost/upload.cgi?upload_id=1234567890abcdef1234567890
abcdef)
Note that you can not pass the progress_id as a hidden POST
parameter, since the Apache2::UploadProgress module never actually
decodes the POST request so it will not be able to determine what
the ID is. The reason for this is that we are trying to track the
rate at which the POST request takes to upload, so we need that ID
before we even start counting the incoming POST request. So the ID
must be passed as a header, or as a simple query parameter, as part
of the action attribute of the form.
progress
When called, this handler will return the upload progress of the
request identified by the given ID. The ID can be provided in
exactly the same way as in the handler method given above (Although
is usually easiest to just provide is as a query parameter called
progress_id).
This handler can return the results in several different formats. By
default, it will return XML data, but that can be changed by
altering the Accept header of the request (if multiple mimes are
present in the Accept header, they are tried in order of qvalue
according to RFC 2616).
For example, if you set the Accept header to the following:
Accept: text/plain; q=0.5, text/x-json
Then the preferred mime type would be text/x-json, but if it was not
available, the data would be sent in text/plain.
The following formats are currently supported:
HTML ( text/html application/xhtml+xml )
JSON ( text/x-json application/x-json )
TEXT ( text/plain )
YAML ( text/x-yaml application/x-yaml )
XML ( text/xml application/xml )
For an example of how to alter the incoming Accept header see the
example script that is included in the examples directory.
PUBLIC METHODS
register_mime( $mime, \&callback )
my $callback = sub {
my ( $size, $received, $r ) = @_;
return sprintf "Total size: %d\n Received: %d\n", $size, $received;
};
Apache2::UploadProgress->register_mime( 'text/plain' => $callback );
Register a content handler for a mime. Callback will be called with
three positional arguments, size, received and $r. Callback is
expected to return a scalar of octets representing the response
body. This can be used to override any of the existing content
handlers (for example if you wanted a custom HTML response, override
'text/html').
INTERNAL METHODS
The following internal methods should never need to be called directly but are documented for completeness.
progress_id( $r )
$progress_id = Apache2::UploadProgress->progress_id($r);
Determine the progress ID for the current request (if it exists)
fetch_progress( $progress_id )
$progress = Apache2::UploadProgress->fetch_progress($progress_id);
printf "size: %d", $progress->[0];
printf "received: %d", $progress->[1];
Pulls the progress values from the cache based on the provided ID
store_progress( $progress_id, [ $size, $received ] )
Apache2::UploadProgress->store_progress( $progress_id, [ $size, $received ] );
Update the progress values in the cache for the given ID
track_progress
An Input filter handler that totals up the number of bytes that have
been sent as part of the current request, and updates the current
progress through calls to "store_progress".
BUGS
Safari
The JavaScript for the embedded progress meter is currently failing
in Safari
Cancelled uploads
When a user cancels an upload, but leaves the page with the progress
meter active, the progress meter may continue to reload indefinately
SEE ALSO
<http://perl.apache.org/docs/2.0/>.
<http://www.modperlbook.org/>.
Apache2::Filter.
Apache2::RequestRec.
AUTHOR(S)
Christian Hansen "chansen@cpan.org"
Cees Hek "ceeshek@cpan.org"
COPYRIGHT
This program is free software, you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.