We are looking for any browser based file upload solution, commercial or free, that manages to survive internet connection interruptions and continues the upload process once the connection is re-established.
The scenario: a website used in areas where the users experience very unstable internet connections and yet need to upload files up to 3 MB (which sounds low but can really be a problem).
There are various jQuery and Flash based solutions around, like CuteUpload, Ajax Uploader and so on, but none of them has so far implemented a mechanism that helps in such a scenario. I am aware that the http protocol does not handle connection resets in a way that allows continuing a post.
A solution is conceivable if the client software knows how much has been uploaded already and is able to slice the upload into chunks while the server-side is smart enough to glue them back together. Or if client and server agree on chunk sizes beforehand, enumerate them, keep the session open and make sure every little piece get shipped. Possible, but probably not easy to write. We are working on .NET, but the server platform doesn’t really matter.
Does anyone have a hint where to look?
there are no really popular or well known solutions for this problem. And I really hope that future versions of HTML will support this out-of-the-box.
But for now you can look at http://upload.thinfile.com/upload/thin.php which is a paid tool but you can try the demo for free.
Also, in the rails world, there is a FOSS gem https://github.com/stakach/Resumable-Uploads.
The method / approach they use is quite sound and cross browser compatible.
Also, don’t look for “internet connection interruptions” look for “resumable file uploads” when googling 🙂