I have a Laravel web application that stores some word documents on AWS S3 and I'd like to be able to edit these documents on the fly. Currently the only way that I know how to do this is to download the file, open it, edit it, save it, and the reupload and replace the document already on S3. This just seems a bit cumbersome and I'm wondering if there is a better way.
I'd like to be able to open the word document (either through an online app or via the native MS Word app), edit it, and when I save it, it would automatically save to the S3 file. Any advice?
Related
The project I am currently working on needs a search engine to search a couple of 10.000 pdf files. When the user searches via the website for a certain keyword, the search engine will return a snippet of the pdf files matching his search criteria. The user then has the option to click on a button to view the entire pdf file.
I figured that the best way to do this was using elasticsearch + fscrawler (https://fscrawler.readthedocs.io/en/fscrawler-2.7/). Running some tests today and was able to crawl to a folder on my local machine.
For serving the PDF files (via a website), I figured I could store the PDF files in a google cloud storage and then use the link of the google cloud storage to let the users view the pdf files. However, FS Crawler does not seem to be able to access the bucket. Any tips or ideas on how to solve this. Feel free to criticize the work method described above. If there are better ways to make the users of the website access the PDF files, I would love to hear it.
Thanks in advance and kind regards!
You can use s3fs-fuse to mount s3 bucket into your file system and then use normal Local FS crawler.
Alternatively, you can fork fscrawler and implement a crawler for s3 similar to crawler-ftp.
I have developed an application which allows Users to select multiple "transactions"; each of this is directly related to a PDF file.
When a User multi-selects them, and "prints" them, these PDF files are merged into one longer file to provide ease of print.
Currently, "transaction" PDFs are generated on request, and so is PDF-merging.
I'm trying to scale this up relaying over Amazon infrastructure, some questions arised to me.
Should I implement a queue for the PDF generation per "transaction"? If so, how can I provide the user a seamless experience? We don't want them to "wait"
Can I use EC2 to generate these PDF files for me? If so, can I provide a "public" link for the user to download the file directly from Amazon, instead of using our resources.
Thanks a lot!
EDIT ---- More details
User inputs some information through a regular form
System generates a PDF per request, using the provided information for the document
The PDF generated by the system is kept under Amazon S3
We provide an API which allows you to "print" multiple pdfs at once, to do so, we merge the selected PDF files from S3, into one file for ease-of-print
When you multi-print documents, a new window is opened which is your merged file directly, user needs to wait around 20ish seconds for it to display.
We can to leverage the resources used to generate the PDFs onto Amazon infrastructure, but we need to keep the same flow, meaning, we should provide an instant public link to the User to download & print the files.
Based on your understanding, i think you just need your link to be created immediately right after user request for file. However, you want in parallel to create PDF merge. I have idea to do that based on my understanding, and may be it could work in your situations.
First start with some logic to create unique pdf file name, with random string representing name of file. And at same time in background generate PDF, but the name of PDF should be same as you created in first step. This will give user instant name of file with link to download. However, your file creation is still in progress.
Make sure, you use threads if using PHP or event loop if using Node.JS to run both steps at same time. This will avoid 404 error for file not found.
Transferring files from EC2 to S3 would also add latency delay. But if you want to preserve files for later or multiple use in future then S3 is good idea as it could simply serve PDF files for faster delivery. As we know S3 is used for static media storage. Otherwise simply compute everything and generate files on EC2
I've tried some of the services out there, including droplet, ctrlq.org/save, and some other sites that support directly fetching a file from a url and uploading it to dropbox, google drive and the like. Without the user having to store the file on a local disk.
Now the problem is none of these services support multiple urls or batch uploading, but I have quite a few urls and I really need a service where I can put them in, split them with enters or semicolons, and have the files uploaded to dropbox.(or any other cloud storage)
Any help would be gladly appreciated.
The Dropbox Saver JavaScript control allows you to save up to 100 files to the user's Dropbox in one shot. You'll need to programmatically create the button using Dropbox.createSaveButton as explained in the linked page.
It seems like the 100-file limit (at any one time) is universal, but you might find that it isn't the case when using the DropBox REST API. It looks possible to do this with NodeJS server side (OAuth and posts) or Javascript client side (automating FileReader). I'll review and try to add content so these aren't just links.
If you can leave a page open for about 20 minutes due to "technical limitations", the dropbox should be loadable 100-at-a-time like that, assuming each upload takes less than 2 seconds; it's an easy hook to add a progress indicator.
If you're preloading the dropbox once yourself or the initial load is compatible with manual action, perhaps mapping a drive and trying to unzip an archive of your links to it would work. If your list of links isn't extremely volatile then the REST API could be used to synchronize changes.
Edit: Forgot to include this page on CloudConvert, which unzips archives containing up to 100 files into DropBox. Your use case doesn't seem to include retrieving the actual content at your servers (generated zip files), sending the automation list to the browser and then having the browser extract to dropbox, but it's another option.
The Dropbox API now offers the ability to save a file into Dropbox directly via a URL. There's a blog post about it here:
https://blogs.dropbox.com/developers/2015/06/programmatically-saving-a-url-to-dropbox/
The documentation can be found here:
https://www.dropbox.com/developers/core/docs#save-url
I have hosted a Tomcat application on CloudBees which allows users to edit some XML and saves them. I need to download and save these files locally for my personal usage. However I could not find a way to do this. I tried the 'download source' option but it downloads the original files that I had uploaded and not the edited versions. However my application is able to access the edited versions (and so clearly everything is being saved all right). Getting these files back is extremely critical and necessary for me and is, in fact, the whole motive of this app. Kindly tell if there is some way to get back the files in CloudBees or any other free Java hosting site which would allow me to do it.
It's not very clear from your question how your app is currently dealing with these files, but I'll take a swing at providing some general info.
To support editing and downloading of files, your app design would need to address the following issues:
How do users edit/upload the changed XML?
Where does your app store the changed XML?
How does your app retrieve the edited XML and make it available for download?
For #1, you will need to provide an edit or upload interface in your app for manipulating the XML files. I'm assuming this is something your app has already solved using a form of some kind.
For #2, you need to pick an approach for storing the files that is appropriate for app's needs and the runtime environment where your app will be deployed. For instance, on CloudBees (or most other CLoud platforms), it's important to understand that the local filesystem of the app can be used for temporary storage, but it is not clustered and it will be wiped away each time the app is updated or restarted. If these XML files need to be available forever, you will need to store them in a persistent location that is external to the application's runtime instance. Most developers use databases (such as the CloudBees MySQL service) to store persistent data in this way. In general, your app can store these files anywhere, but your app needs to manage how to store them, and how to retrieve them later.
For #3, to allow a user to download the changed files, you will need to implement your own mechanism for retrieving the file from its persistent location, and then send it back to the user's browser. If you want something like right-click "Save As" to work, then your app will just need to support a URL that can display the edited XML file directly in the browser. If your app then provides a link to that URL, users can download it using RightClick+SaveAs. If you want the user to be able to click on a button/link and trigger a Save As dialog automatically, then you'd need to write a URL handler (Servlet) that serves the XML content up using a Content-Disposition header (see this StackOverflow article). This header will tell the browser that the file is supposed to be saved to disk, and allows you to provide a default file name.
I wanna create a table somehow in wondows phone that holds data that never changes and the application querys that data. Pretty simple but not sure how to do it.
Example
a table with Name, Description
When you open the app all the theres an input box to enter a name then you press a button and the description displays.
Using isolated storage seems like you are writing all the data to a file everytime the a user opens the app. Is that how it works?
Using isolated storage seems like you are writing all the data to a file everytime the a user opens the app. Is that how it works?
No, IsolatedStorage is storage - you can think of it as "disk" - so everything in it is persisted between application runs.
When you first run your application, then you'll need to create your files there, but after that time, then the files will already be in place.
If you need to put a large amount of data into IsolatedStorage and then need to search that data later, then "lite" database solutions like http://sterling.codeplex.com/ or SqlLite might help
For test purposes simply hard code the values as a dictionary.
In the long term I suggest you store the information as a file in isolated storage.
Here is an article that describes how to load and save data to isolated storage