I have a problem I’ve been dealing with lately. My application asks its users to upload videos, to be shared with a private community. They are teaching videos, which are not always optimized for web quality to start with. The problem is, many of the videos are huge, way over the 50 megs I’ve seen in another question. In one case, a video was over a gig, and the only solution I had was to take the client’s video from box.net, upload it to the video server via FTP, then associate it with the client’s account by updating the database manually. Obviously, we don’t want to deal with videos this way, we need it to all be handled automatically.
I’ve considered using either the box.net or dropbox API to facilitate large uploads, but would rather not go that way if I don’t have to. We’re using PHP for the main logic of the site, though I’m comfortable with many other languages, especially Python, but including Java, C++, or Perl. If I have to dedicate a whole server or server instance to handling the uploads, I will.
I’d rather do the client-side using native browser JavaScript, instead of Flash or other proprietary tech.
What is the final answer to uploading huge files though the web, by handling the server response in PHP or any other language?
It is possible to raise the limits in Apache and PHP to handle files of this size. The basic HTTP upload mechanism does not offer progressive information, however, so I would usually consider this acceptable only for LAN-type connections.
The normal alternative is to locate a Flash or Javascript uploader widget. These have the bonus that they can display progressive information and will integrate well with a PHP-based website.