Re: [Vfs-devel] First on the topic list?

[Abdul-Wahid P. <ee...@we...>]

On Mon, 5 Jun 2000, Tony Kirk wrote:

>     We may have to work out another storage method for the files since not
> all DBSs have comparable functions to the Postgres function; pg_lo_import.
> On large files for servers without a function like that the only option
> would really be to encode the file and store it or read the file in and
> store it as a normal blob type. Both of which would be time consuming for
> very large files (8 megs or more). How about storing the file as a file?
> Creating a file named VFSXXXXX where X would be randomly generated
> characters to insure unique file names. Just keep looping until you get a
> random file name. Then store the original filename in the database so it can
> be sent to the user with the correct file name. That would insure that
> separate methods wouldn't be needed for storing the files with different
> DBSs. Just an idea.

Yes, I am aware of this problem and I think I included it on the original
TODO list in the 0.1 distrbution. I agree with your solution as it is
pretty much with what I already had in mind. The disadvantange of the
filesystem way is that you need to have a webserver writeable directory.
But apart from that it isn't really a problem. Everyfile has a unique file
number "file_id". Maybe we could use that for the filesystem filename so
that it becomes something like VFS$file_id. Is there any advantage of
making the filename random?

 
>     Also we need to work out the layout of the scripts. If you want the
> scripts as one set of files and the db_wrapper files to be separate - it
> would require a small rewrite of some of the current code since there is SQL
> statements being generated through the scripts. My idea for the layout would
> be the following.
> 
> config.inc
> postgres_db_wrapper.inc
> mysql_db_wrapper.inc
> [then whatever other databases will be supported]_db_wrapper.inc
> Then the rest of the scripts.

I agree with this layout. However, I think we should take a look at the
class.DBI. Although it would involve a lot being rewritten, they may have
done a lot of work for us already. I am waiting for Roland to get back to
us about it. He doesn't seem to have joined the mailing list yet.

You can find out about class.DBI at

http://evil.inetarena.com/php/DBI.php3



> In the config.inc file would be a setting like: 
> $dbtype = "postgres";
> 
> and in the scripts needing the db functions all you would need is:
> 
> require("config.inc");
> require("$dbtype_db_wrapper.inc");
> 
> Does all of this make sense? It's a pretty typical setup for PHP apps that
> support multiple DBSs.

Yes it makes sense. I also wanted to move all the .inc files to be
included from the header.inc file so that every page only needs to include
one .inc file to get everything set-up as required.


Regards,

AW