How to allow only certain files in Apache?

uploading/downloading huge files

• How to code a Perl web app to upload/download HUGE files? A straight HTTP upload/download for my app is untenable because I'm dealing with files of hundreds of megs each. I'd like to see a solution that would offer progress bars, and (more importantly) the ability to restart incomplete uploads or downloads. The existing app is Apache 1.3/mod_perl/perl 5.8. Uploads require a login; downloads don't, but are limited inasmuch as they're keyed by UUIDs that are only considered valid in a short time-window. (I don't want the downloaders to see the real filename or location, but I suppose could make a link named for the UUID that gets deleted after its valid lifetime if I pursue an FTPish solution.) I'm open to ditching doing the uploading and downloading in the browser if need be and requiring users to install client software to upload/download, but the download solution would need to be simple, easy, and available for all of Windows, Mac, and Linux. The upload solution would need to be simple and available for Windows. But ideally, something AJAXy on the client-side and Perl (or plays-well-with-Perl) on the server-side can save the day and allow me to stick with the browser. I haven't done anything like this before. Anyone have any suggestions? (3d-party hosting isn't an option.)

• Answer:

  FTP comes to mind... There is an enormous variety of software for FTP and most web browsers can do FTP natively (download at least). Also many programming languages have some FTP support built into them, so you could potentially write your own client if you want to "hide" the fact that it's FTP. There are also a variety of "download managers" available for web browsers. Many/most of these support download resuming, and handle large files fine. I don't know if any of them do uploading, I don't really use them much, but it's an option I suppose. For upload, I've made applications in the past that split the file up into pieces and uploade each seperately - in fact this is how I upload full-size images to my website. Once they're all uploaded I re-constitute them into one file. Supporting upload stop/start would mostly be a matter of detecting which ones had already been uploaded - I don't do this myself because most of my files are 5 megs or less, so individual success is largely guaranteed. I have a simple application that runs on the client side. Doing this in any scripting language would be pretty easy. (I did it in tcl/tk)