Let's say we have a chat app and we want users to be able to send images.
Would it be appropriate to convert the image to Base64 in order to send the image through the websocket? A few posts I was reading mentioned this wouldn't be a good use of websockets, so would it be better to have an endpoint for images, and tie that image to the message on upload completion?
Totally new to websockets, so I'm not really sure what to do here.
You can use XMLHttpRequest for file upload and then send the link along with the data through websocket.
Uploading file through websocket will require extra code at the server side to convert the received data to files.
Also check http://binaryjs.com/
BinaryJS is bidrectional realtime binary data with binary websockets
As of today, XMLHttpRequest is the standard most of the companies are using for the file upload, some of the reasons for choosing HTTP are support for caching, gzipping, authentication, firewall, browser compatibility and horizontal scaling.
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I have some questions about uploading images to cloud storage, I wish someone could help me. I would like answers according to best practices:
Which is better, send the images to my API with all other form information and then send them to the cloud or upload them to the cloud directly via Frontend and separate from other form information?
Do I need to make a request for each image or is it better to upload all images directly?
Backend generates a signed url at which the client uploads the video directly - this requires solid authentication
Depends if the client has a good internet connection or not but batching is usually good
I have images stored in Google Cloud Storage. Whenever my frontend (Swift) requests a certain image I would like to send the image as quickly and efficiently as possible from my backend.
Conveniently, Google Cloud Storage has direct image links for every image.
Is it most efficient to send a multipart/form-data the same way I send an image captured by a user in the front end to the backend? Or is it more efficient to send the URL of the image stored in the cloud where the frontend can proceed to download the image from that URL?
This can indeed be done through a signed URL which provides limited permission and time to make a request. With signed URLs authentication information is contained in their query string, allowing users without credentials to perform specific actions on a resource.
I would like to point out however that Signed URLs can only be used to access resources in Cloud Storage through XML API endpoints.
Since you are using Swift for your frontend I would also like to direct you to explore Google APIs for iOS, such as CocoaPods.
I was checking Imageresizer S3 Reader2 plugin, and I have the following question.
My app is basically a c# REST API that has a functionality of serving
photos (resized photos).
Would it be possible to use Imageresizer+Amazon S3 with REST API so I can resize
photos in with Imageresizer in c# before serving it and without transferring original photo over network?
You'll have to transfer the original photo from S3 to your server (at least once) in order to resize it. The S3Reader2 plugin does this automatically. If you want to prevent repeat requests, look into SourceDiskCache.
Otherwise, that's exactly how ImageResizer+S3Reader2 functions.
I am asking this here because Soundcloud does not have support. I going to build a website that people can purchase audio files from using Soundcloud to download the files (and stream before buy). I want to be able to access the download file link in the Soundcloud API without the download link being enabled and showing on the Soundcloud UI. I can't seem to find this info in the Soundcloud API docs. I am going to have a Paypal redirect after the payment to the download link. I know this is a weird way of doing this but I have certain criteria I have to meet. I would host the audio files on my server but they are huge. Anyone have experience with this or can help?
im not sure its possible to do what you want. (very easily at least)
there would be no way for the purchaser to access the 'download' track on soundcloud directly unless downloads are specifically enabled for that track.
really the only way to not host the files and still be able to provide the download would be to use the api to download or proxy the track from soundcloud to your server, using your credentials (because you always have access to your own tracks, download or stream). mind you this would use 2x the bandwidth usage (the server getting the track from soundcloud, and the client downloading the track), and storage space would only be impacked on a temporary bases. but. this is a pretty hacky way and not really a good/proper solution.
you can:
-compress/re-encode the audio as to not use as much disk space
-pay for more storage space at your web host, its usually pretty cheap thse days.
So you want to charge on something free? Well, I think all the downloader out there are middleware where they stream the track from soundcloud and response to client as attachment upon request, one of many examples is http://wittysound.com. Cheapest way to get thing done is providing direct link to soundcloud server like what http://soundflush.com does
I am creating a mobile app through Phonegap as the client and using Rails as the back-end. I am deploying my app to Heroku and am planning to use S3 to store the image files, because that is what is recommended from my various readings online.
I was wondering how could the Rails controller be used to send images back from Ajax requests from Phonegap.
I am not sure how to write the back-end API code to send images to requests.
I also read that using the send_file method without x-send_file enabled will slow down the server because sending the image would block other request until it is done.
Please let me know if you have any insights.
You could use redirects to the S3 assets here, then your browser is just getting the image directly, and not holding up one of your server processes while the browser slowly downloads the images.
If you need to keep your images private you can use the signed URL feature of S3 to only give signed and time limited URL's to the appropriate users. (See my commit to Paperclip: https://github.com/thoughtbot/paperclip/pull/292)