How to track currently downloaded files from server? - php

Question

I'm using shared hosting(hostgator).
I have site with video content like youtube written in php.
Implemented via direct links to mp4 files and html video tag.
I want to limit connections for file downloads(plays) to around 350.
Because if I have more than ~350 connections hostgator blocks my site.
Is there any way to do that?
Any other suggestions how to deal with this situation will also be helpful.

Answer 1

You could use a php script which handles the actual file download. If the script is executed, increment your download counter and if the file is sent completely to the client, close the connection.
To detect if the file is completely sent, you should send the file in small chunks and check after each transmitted chunk, if the connection is still open.
To do this
send the correct mime-types and http headers
use ignore_user_abort to keep the script running if the client closes the connection
send the file in small chunks and check after each chunk if the connection is still alive. ob_flush and flush are used to keep the output buffer empty. connection_status or connection_aborted to test if the connection is still open.
after the whole file is submited, decrement your connection counter
In addition to this, you might also implement HTTP_RANGE, to resume incomplete downloads. This should be important especially for video downloads, if you want to seek somewhere in the middle of the stream.
Below a little .htaccess that rewrite all the requests for the PHP file.
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^ yourFile.php [L]
</IfModule>
Below the PHP file
// code to increment the counter..
// increment_counter(); ...
// Use the request path (URI) to choose what file to send.
$filename = 'video.mp4';
$size = filesize($filename);
$f = fopen($filename, 'rb');
if (!$f) {
// error...
}
ignore_user_abort(true);
set_time_limit(0);
header("Content-Length: $size");
header("Content-Type: video/mp4");
while (!feof($f)) {
echo fread($f, 8192);
ob_flush();
flush();
if (connection_status() != 0) {
// download aborted... decrement the counter
// decrement_counter(); ...
break;
}
}
fclose($f);
// download completed - decrement counter
// decrement_counter(); ...
This script is pretty simple, but should give you an idea. You might add more logic (as said above HTTP_RANGE) or send other headers, but this should give you a good starting point.
References:
Below the links to the documentation of the functions that could be less known.
connection_status
ignore_user_abort