[Catalyst] Detecting if a user aborted a (long) download

[Jeff Chimene]

Jonathan Rockway wrote:
> On Sunday 11 March 2007 21:18, Jeff Chimene wrote:
>   
>> Jonathan Rockway wrote:
>>     
>>> On Sunday 11 March 2007 20:59, Jeff Chimene wrote:
>>>       
>>>> How does that differ from something that compares bytes sent to bytes
>>>> received? Assuming that the OP defines success when "bytes received =
>>>> bytes sent"
>>>>         
>>> How do you determine how many bytes were received and successfully
>>> written to disk?
>>>       
>> There's also this:
>>     
>>> http://ajaxpatterns.org/Progress_Indicator#What_sort_of_progress_indicato
>>> r_will_you_use.3F
>>>       
>
> I think this thread has wandered a bit off topic.
That's hardly for you to decide, now is it?
>   We are talking about how to 
> ensure that a user has reliably downloaded and is able to access (from his 
> own machine) an mp3 file.  
No, you are. The original question was "I need to figure out if a user 
aborted a longish download."
> The answer is that you can't do that without 
> asking the user :)
>   
To that question, you are correct. But, that's not the question.
> There are various compromises that you can make instead, including checking to 
> see if the whole file at least made it out of your catalyst app (by having 
> your filehandle monitor that for you).  You can also give the user a good 
> amount of time to download the file as many times as he likes (bandwidth is 
> cheap), or you can have customer support allow the user to re-download if he 
> complains (Apple does this).
>
> You are free to ignore all of the above advice.  It isn't my problem.
>   
Then why bother to reply?

Since we haven't heard from the OP. I have two questions:
o Did you investigate sendfile?
o Have you considered implementing a download progress indicator? One of 
the reasons users give up on downloads is that they don't know what's 
happening.