Hey guys,

Is it possible to track the download of someone on my server? I want to find out if the person has completed the download or not. The files are usually 300+ MB.

Any ideas, or is it impossible?

Thanks,
Jon

Depends on the server (software). If it's on a *nix platform and you're using FTP, the bytes downloaded'll be in the ftp transfer logs. If you're using a web server to front-end their client, the bytes downloaded will be in the web server's logs. Just about every server (program) logs what it's doing.... I'll bet the info's there somewhere.

It's on a linux server running Apache. It's being served from a website via a download link. Good point about the log files. I'll just have to figure out which one, and how to parse it to get the downloading information.

Thanks for the tip.

Be careful, most log files will show the total bytes of the file even if it wasn't completely downloaded. You'll want to test this first.

You could write a php script to monitor if the downloaded file has hit the last byte of the file thats being set to the user downloading the file and log it to like a database or a flat text file.

If you need something like this written for you let me know, i've already got something like this in one of my scripts.

You could write a script that opens a file descriptor in PHP for example, that flags a database when it starts and stops.

Example:



mysql_query( /* insert a stamp and identifier into the database */, DB );
$f = '/path/to/your/';
$n = 'file.zip';
header( "Content-type: application/octet-stream" );
header( "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"$n\"" );
header( "Content-length:". filesize( $f.$n ) );
$fp = fopen( $f.$n , "rb" );
fpassthru( $fp );
fclose( $fp );
mysql_query( /* delete stamp previously inserted into the database */, DB );


HTH
Alex

Yup, that's exactly what i do with my script.

What happens then if someone uses a Download Accelerator or Resume program? Wont it display twice?

here is how i would go about it...


<a href=download.php?downloadid=1>Download a file here</a>

then in php

if ($downloadid==1) {

$result=mysql_query("UPDATE table SET download_file1=download_file1+1");

//that will track that someone has downloaded the file



Header("Location :link_to_the_file.exe");

//that will send the user to download that they requested
}


its simple really, when they click the link it updates the mysql table to +1 for that file, then redirects the page to the file they wanted to download

...most log files will show the total bytes of the file even if it wasn't completely downloaded.

Can you give a few examples? I've never seen a mainstream Linux app lie in it's logs.


...it updates the mysql table to +1 for that file, then redirects...

The OP wants to track completion of the download.