I'm working on an application which allows cartoonists to upload and schedule comic strips at webcomicsnation.com.
At present, the way it works is that the cartoonist uploads a strip on one page of a "wizard" style form, then enters metadata about the strip (date it should go live, description, title, which series it belongs to, etc., etc) on another page of the same wizard. This works for about 90% of our alpha testers. However, many of the cartoonists have digital archives that go back for years, and are looking for a way to mass-upload, say, five hundred strips, and have them entered into the database automatically. Since most of the people with this problem have been using the popular Keenspace.com file-naming convention, the dates these files were originally supposed to "go live" on the cartoonist's site are easily derived from the filename (e.g. 20030101.gif). For various reasons, I am unable to give FTP access to the cartoonists -- only http upload. What I'd like to find is a pre-written (free or commercial) object that will a). Open an uploaded .zip or .sit archive. b). Allow me to manipulate the files -- move them to each cartoonist's own directory, for example, and rename them to some random value. c). Allow me to enter data records for each file, based on its original filename (I can't collect ALL the metadata that will be needed this way, but the date field is the way that the cartoonist's archives are organized, so I can at least get the strips in the correct order in the public archive) and, of course its new filename. I've found plenty of ways to open and manipulate .tar files, but these cartoonists (generally using Mac's) aren't really going to be comfortable with that. I've also found at least one object that will allow me to open .zip files (I think -- haven't tested it), but, again, some of these guys go all freaky on me when they can't do exactly what they're used to doing. Which is, of course, the perogative of the paying user (grin). They'd rather have .sit. Anybody know of anything like this? If not, is anybody willing to give me a quote for developing something like this for me? Thanks! Joey www.webcomicsnation.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
