Progress Bar

Hello,

There is a smart time counting mechanism used to show the total progress. The only one thing it does not put into account is the upload script processing time.

The method by which progress is shown right now clearly needs modification. For instance when uploading large images or video, the progress bar quickly (in a matter of seconds) moves to the end of the box and then hangs. This does not result in a very good user experience as they have no idea if their upload is progressing or not.

Shaun

These modifications don't address the core issue however. Giving the user a message does nothing to really explain to them what is happening. It seems to me that you are not using blocking IO when writing the files to the server. Is this possible?

Yes I realize that you are write a HTTP POST request to the server and the script then writes the file to the server drive. But when analyzing the packets being sent to the server and comparing that with the progress bar they do not match. My PC is still sending packets to the server when your progress bar indicates the file has been sent, this is wrong! The server isn't processing it yet, it hasn't even received it. I can verify that by checking the running processes on the server and the script to handle the image isn't even running. There is absolutely no way that it takes 10 seconds to upload 100MB across a DSL connection! Plain and simple.

What Java package do you use to create and send the HTTP POST? Apache HTTPClient?

By the way, I love the product and this is really the only small annoyance with it!

Shaun

Hi Alex,

Thanks for your reply. I understand that you write chunks to the output stream as the server requests it. However this does not appear to be what is happening. My current configuration is that I don't upload the source file but rather a resized version of the image. Is it possible that when uploading a resized image it does not upload in chunks but rather buffers the whole file and thus updates the progress bar quickly, as the file is being buffered opposed to being sent?

If this problem is due to a server side issue can you point me in the direction of some server documentation that would resolve this issue? We are running Apache 2.0.52.

Thanks a lot!
Shaun

Alex,

Congratulations on your marriage and honeymoon! I've never been to Singapore and don't have any plans to go. :) I've heard it's very nice though!

As for the upload feature ... I'm assuming in the Java version that to upload the file you extend the PartBase class (from Apache HttpClient) and use a FilePartSource to wrap the image file. I would then assume that you override the sendData method (in your PartBase derived class), and then call the outputstream.write() method with a byte array of fixed length (say 4096). This write should be synchronous. I'm also assuming that after every write in the sendData method you update the progress bar. So as you write each chunk of the file the progress bar is updated. So my question ... is it possible that the Parts for Description, FileSize, etc. are updating the progress bar, i.e. in their sendData methods they are making a method call that is updating the progress bar. I guess more generally my question can be stated as "is the progress bar ONLY being updated in the sendData method for the class that wraps the image file (FilePartSource)?" This can be the only thing I can think of if I am to assume that sendData is writing synchrously, which I think it is.

Shaun

Hello,

You are almost completely right about the uploading process. There is one advantage of this simple upload firing mechanism. We have optimized the calls of Progress event handler while the data is uploaded. Progress event handler is called only when percentage value of full upload process is changed. Before this feature implementation upload process was very slow because of lots of Progress event handler calls. We have optimized these calls and now upload is fast enough. As about PartBase, there are several subclasses of this class to store files and textual data such as descriptions. All of these subclasses call Progress event handler.

Hello,

May be the reason is in HTTP authentication. In some cases it looks like the data uploaded twice. At the first time the server only requests the data but there is no real upload. After that the data is requested again.

Alex,

I just tried the uploader with Netscape 9.0b2 and the progress bar worked fine! So this is a browser issue with IE and Firefox. Any idea what it could be about these browsers that is causing this problem with the progress bar? Is the progress bar a Java/ActiveX GUI component or a browser controlled component?

Shaun