Hi,

I was thinking of building or buying an Online file management system.

It should be a really basic system:

- each folder has to be password protected
- visitors can ONLY download a file, no deleting, renaming, uploading

Has anyone got a tip or know of a product I can purchase that can do this?

Thanks!

Mitch

Mitch,

This:
www.dmxzone.com/showDetail.asp?TypeId=3&NewsId=3750
and it's related tutorials together with the free Ultradev authentication behaviors is probably the cheapest solution...

Community support is all around you <img src=../images/dmxzone/forum/icon_smile.gif border=0 align=middle>

Good planning before you start is something I can also recommend <img src=../images/dmxzone/forum/icon_smile_blush.gif border=0 align=middle>

With kind regards,

Dennis van Galen
Webmaster KPN Services
Financial and Information Services

Hi Dennis,

Thanks but that link has to do with uploading, I actually already purchased that extention and use it a lot.

I need help with downloading and limiting access.

Thanks!

Mitch

That's the planning part I mentioned...
Let's say our user comes to our website, hits a link towards a page allowing him to upload certain documents into certain folders, user gets redirected to the main page and is presented with a menu to upload a further file, or search uploaded files to download one.
To get to this menu, the user had to login to the website and navigate to section files.

Is that kinda what you were hoping ?

It's not that hard to do, it's all in the planning then the behaviors do 99.9 % of the work for you.

There's some really good authentication tutorials here in the zone and omar has some usefull ones:
www.udnewbie.com/index.cfm

Ah...I'm also beginning to understand why ColdFusion is so popular, i could just give you this link:
www.forta.com/books/0321125169/
It has a sample chapter describing word for word on how to create a file management system...

If you need more help then let me know how far you've allready come with uploading and retrieving. You will probably want to hit the user on a page that forces the actual download of the file and redirects him away again, right-click protecting that page might be a good idea to not let your file locations be known to anyone.


And now the reason why i'm not just giving you a commercial link to a finished product.

Our company paid 40.000 EUROS for something I can do with ASPupload in a day or two and that's only protected for upload, all files can be found and downloaded without logging in. Access backend and it's not used much :-/

With kind regards,

Dennis van Galen
Webmaster KPN Services
Financial and Information Services

Hi Dennis,

THanks for the information.

This is the whole story/explanation of what I want to do:

- the site is for an online school
- each class has a folder, let's say eng101
- in the folder there are 10 files that the instructor can use to help teach the class
- there are almost 200 classes/folders
- we only want instructors that need to see eng101 files to see them, everyone else hould not be able to see them
- we also want to set it up so people cannot upload, delete or rename a file, to avoid us having to constantly reload a file.

Only people with the master ftp password would have access to all the folders, that would be accessed via ws_ftp.

Thanks.

Mitch

Hey Mitch,

That isn't too hard to do, what kind of database are you using ? And more importantly, are people allready logging into the website ? That is the most difficult part of the whole thing. But then again, you use show hide and conditional regions to determine what people see based on their access levels.
I allready have such a setup as you describe running, i created a portal which should grow but is now on hold for further development until we decide if we continue in .net or coldfusion, but it has a small section for file upload and another for foto upload, image only, each section to add took about a day to build and refine <img src=../images/dmxzone/forum/icon_smile_wink.gif border=0 align=middle> And people actually DO use it, great !

Why don't you mail me later and show me what you allready have (layout and stuff), my email is in my profile.
Only too glad to help, since my own web-app is on hold and all i'm doing now is static web changes and sometimes when i grow sick of that I add a table in our database and output it on asp page, saves the DW hassle for me as well <img src=../images/dmxzone/forum/icon_smile_wink.gif border=0 align=middle> I have constantly changing contact information, if someone leaves or a new person arrives there's work to be done, still learning how to make the most use of SQL server, triggers are fun, stored procedures are great. I just schedule a job to run at 10pm to re-index all indexes, I know people stop visiting after 8pm. The benefit if intranet development i guess, or downside since they are constantly bothering me if something is wrong.

Maybe in the end you could submit a tutorial about it, after it's done and you understand how basic it functions and more importantly, how it is built.

I still need to fully grasp the concept of content management in it's finest.
I press this link, a whole new set of pages appears which can be accessed and altered and blah blah. But it's now tuesday, don't expect it done by friday, i still got a daytime job, weekend will probably see the most work done <img src=../images/dmxzone/forum/icon_smile_wink.gif border=0 align=middle>. And that reminds me that it is time to sleep over here in Europe, for me anyway. That's also good cause i will have a clearer head tomorrow.

Would be handy if I knew how advanced your knowledge of UDev is, I started april 2001 took a class or two and that monster prohibits me from using DWMX to alter our production site, some behaviors at the heart of it cannot be altered in DWMX and that sucks, rather it forces me to re-engineer it and that's good, from a documentation point of view.

Haha, people say I talk too much, and it's true.

Mail me some of the things I asked above and I'll see how I can help you out. I'd rather help instead of doing all the work, because YOU have to maintain it and you WILL have to expand on it so that you can let your students take tests, but you will figure that out eventually <img src=../images/dmxzone/forum/icon_smile_wink.gif border=0 align=middle>

Goodnight Mitch, i'll hear from you tomorrow ?

With kind regards,

Dennis van Galen
Webmaster KPN Services
Financial and Information Services

Mitchell,

Please look here and let me know if it's what you had in mind:
djvgalen.tripod.com/teachers/rough_setup.htm

If you go for a setup like that one, you can administer everything without using a FTP program and it's easy and more importantly cheap to implement and with possibilities of expanding it, but it's best to plan ahead if expansion is expected.

With kind regards,

Dennis van Galen
Webmaster KPN Services
Financial and Information Services