[Xitami] Developer Issue: POST STDIN vs CGI read

[RPO]

I tested Windows Apache (port 8080) and Windows Xitami (port 80), running identical upload scripts.  The upload form passes all the raw POST data to upload.pl and an onSubmit calls a popup window running progress.pl.  The upload.pl reads in all the raw POST data through a standard "while (<STDIN>)", during the while the script writes "bytesReadIn of totalBytes" to a temp file, every 8K of read in raw data the script flushes the buffer to the temp file to ensure its being written to properly.  While this the data is being read in and the temp file is being written to, the progress.pl script refreshes in the popup window every two seconds.  During each refresh it reads the last "bytesReadIn of totalBytes" entry in the temp file to create a visual progress bar, bytes counter and time elapsed.

In Apache, this whole process works because the temp file gets created and is written to on every 8K buffer flush, thus allowing the Progress Bar to increment properly in the popup window.  In Xitami, the temp file creation and/or the flush is being ignored and the temp file doesn't get created until the entire STDIN done being read in, thus the progress bar popup window remains empty during the entire upload until suddenly it shows 100% completed.  This is a very fundamental difference and issue in the way the Xitami CGI engine captures the POST data and passes it a parsing script. 

Can anyone elaborate on this?  This is a very critical issue for me.  I have created a photo upload site and am highly worried that without a status/progress bar users will think their browser has hung or the server has timed out. Big uploads of 5Mb to 15Mb could take 5 to 8 minutes, if users don't see a visual progress meter incrementing they will cancel the upload.  

Is there some setting or switch I am not aware of that can correct this problem?  If not, I may have to consider moving to Apache and I have no desire of doing that.  I have been a devoted Xitami user for nearly 7 years now and have no desire to stop being a Xitami user.

-R
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: RPO 
  To: xitami at lists.xitami.org 
  Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2005 4:13 PM
  Subject: [Xitami] Developer Issue: POST STDIN vs CGI read


  I am running Xitami on W2k machine.  How does Xitami handle POST data?  I am trying to read in the raw POST data from a file upload form, and while reading in the raw data my script writes to a temp file the progress of that upload.  Every 8k of POST data the temp file gets updated.  In the script the temp file gets created before the POST STDIN occurs. However, with Xitami the temp file doesn't get created until AFTER the entire raw STDIN has been processed, thus preventing the use of any status or progess data.  

  Is Xitami server somehow holding onto the raw POST data, waiting for it to be completely read in, before handing it off to the CGI compiler or before handing it off to the perl script?  This same script works on Linux/apache the way its intended to, but on Windows/Xitami the temp file doesn't get written til after the raw data is completely read in.

  This is a serious issue because it is inteferring with the ability to create a Progress Bar that shows users the status of a multi-file upload.  With Perl, the only way to create a Progress Bar is to write updates to a temp file (bytesIN of totalBytes) while the files are being uploaded, and a popup window refreshes itself and processes the contents of that temp file to be able to provide the visual progress of the file upload.  If Xitami is somehow interferring with the raw read of POST data, then there is no effective way of creating that temp file.

  -Russel




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