Re: Question on Posting a huge file and its limits.

Burjiz,

The POST method is mainly used for forms, where your client
sends the server a string containing the variables of your
query. In addition, this string must be sent in a urlencoded
form.

One thing I don't understand now is if you're trying to post
a big file, or just send a big number of variables. If it's 
the latter, it may well be a limitation of either libwww or 
the apache server. It's hard to prepare oneself to receive a
query string having around 1Mo of variables :)

> 3) This is only version that works :
>    w3c -post -form http://server/script.xyz var1=value1 var2=value2
>
>     The problem with this method is that the argv list becomes very long
> and w3c complains

Yep, like I wrote here above, your file is getting translated into tokens.


Now, if what you're trying to do is just send your file as if
it were a big query string, your file would have to be treated
as a big number of variables, then urlencoded. I don't even want
to think about the headaches a script may have to reconstitute
that file.

The only way to do a correct POST of a file, is to use a protocol
called "form-based file upload." This requires your using a
special form type attribute (FILE). Unfortunately, as far as
I know, libwww does not yet support this feature. I don't know
about Apache. I know that you can use this feature with Netscape.

So, in a nutshell. Don't use w3c to POST a file! You should
use the form-based file upload protocol. If your server can't
talk it, then try to reconfigure it for using it with PUT, or
upgrade it. 

I have read on some newsgroups about people using Apache to do a PUT,
so it's possible to do so. Many other servers understand the PUT
command, like w3c's Jigsaw and CERN server.

If you're into hacking, you may go inside libwww and alter the
processing of POST, so that the input string does not get tokenized.
I think this may be much more work than trying to reconfigure your server.

Maybe someone else knows of a web tool for posting files?

Hope this is of help Burjiz,

-Jose

Received on Wednesday, 27 November 1996 10:21:26 UTC