libURL HTTP downloading

[Trevor DeVore]

On Aug 8, 2009, at 4:33 PM, stephen barncard wrote:

> Perhaps Trevor could chime in here... he has a upgraded version of  
> libURL
> that is used in his GLX Application Framework, however I don't know  
> if it
> will work outside his environment or if it can solve your problem,  
> but it's
> worth checking out.

The customized version of libURL doesn't change how files are  
downloaded so there would be no difference in regards to what Phil is  
trying to do. The customized version of libURL and the GLX App  
Framework work together to handle interactions with proxy servers but  
the rest of the features just work:

* Automatic handling of cookies
* Support for making HEAD requests
* Callbacks for working with invalid SSL Certs (i.e. display dialog to  
user to warn them)
* Non-blocking posts.

On Aug 8, 2009, at 4:25 PM, Phil Davis wrote:

> I assume that, when using Rev's libURL-based HTTP downloading,  
> errors are more likely to occur when downloading many smaller files  
> than when downloading a few larger ones. Statistically this makes  
> sense, but can anyone speak to this from their experience? The "many  
> small files" scenario I'm talking about is a few hundred files in a  
> single download sequence, with most files in the under-1mb category  
> except for a few .mov files that are typically 5 to 70mb each.

I had some training software that would download all of it's media  
from a server. The amount of media varied from course to course but  
there was a lot of it. Mostly still images but there were a number of  
videos as well. libURL worked great. The only thing I remember  
accounting for was timeouts. I would always download a url in a repeat  
loop. If there was no error then exit. If the error was timeout then  
try again, up to 3 - 5 times. I think I picked up this trick from Chipp.

Regards,

-- 
Trevor DeVore
Blue Mango Learning Systems
www.bluemangolearning.com    -    www.screensteps.com