[Catalyst] Re: Handling slow uploads externally

[Brian Kirkbride]

A. Pagaltzis wrote:
> Hi Brian,
> 
> * Brian Kirkbride <brian.kirkbride at deeperbydesign.com> [2007-04-12 19:25]:
>> I have a CMS-like application using Catalyst for which about
>> 40-50% of requests contain large file uploads. I'm using a
>> pretty standard two-tiered setup to avoid tying up heavy
>> mod_perl procs for slow client downloads.
>>
>> […]
>>
>> I'm thinking of splitting file upload handling out to a
>> simple CGI app (no Catalyst code) that serializes the request,
>> including uploaded files, to a tmp directory. It would then
>> redirect to a Catalyst-handled URL matching the serialized
>> request.
> 
> My suggestion is to do something much more transparent.
> 
> Use a CGI script on the front-end webserver to accept uploads.
> When the upload completes, the CGI script then in turn makes a
> HTTP request to the application webserver server to upload the
> file, and returns the app’s response to the client.
> 
> That way, the actual application itself does not need to change
> at all. There is no serialisation mechanism, no extra code in the
> application to handle such a special upload mechanism, no need
> for configuration of filesystem paths or other shared resources,
> nothing. The handling is isolated on the front-end webserver.
> 
> This way, a programming consideration becomes a mere deployment
> consideration.
> 
> HTTP is great like that.
> 
>> Is there something like this in existence already? I searched
>> Google and CPAN but didn't find anything promising. I'd
>> appreciate any tips or suggestions. If I do implement it from
>> scratch, would there be any interest in the CGI and a Catalyst
>> base controller being released on CPAN?
> 
> Sometimes, there is no code to do something because no code is
> needed to do it. :-)
> 

Wonderful, thank you for the insight Aristotle.  I will try Perrin's suggestion 
of using an upload-buffering proxy first, falling back on a simple CGI proxy 
like this if need be.