May you add support for returning 304 status when files in private filesystem not changed?

With help of this thread, I've got it into your module. Maybe this could be interesting for others too.

One thing of the linked thread, that not worked, so I've left it out:

if(!empty($file))

Maybe you take a look. I really don't know it is important or not.

A patch for your module attached.

It's probably better to use file's modification time instead of query the database

As I've wrote: The code is not mine. I've just done some modifications, like turning out stuff, that your code already do later and set the right string variables into it.

And removed a little part, that not worked, without seeing the reason why it did not work): if(!empty($file))

During implementation I've use firefox with proxomitron in the middle, to watch the requests and answers. As I was ready, I got with no file in cache answer 200 and with unchanged file in cache 304.

After that, I've cleared the browser cache of IE10, FireFox 19 and Chrome 24 and took a look at the network meter sidebar gadget. I've load all my photogaleries in all 3 browsers. I had high load as expected. Every file got downloaded.

The second turn with every file in browsercache. Same Galleries. Nearly no load.

After that, I've checked with iPhone (iOS 6.12) . Result: Its using the browsercache too as I wanted to get.

Yes. Its working.

But one thing I didn't undestood. To check for not modified, the if condition should be

if($modified == $ifs)

and not

if($modified < $ifs)

Am I wrong?

EDIT: Yes. You are right. Something ist wrong. One thing I've not tested before was uploading a modified file. After that it was still using the old one :(

I hope I find some time to try the way you've suggested.

EDIT2: I've found a working solution, that really detects changed files and returns 304 when not changed. Only filetime seemed not to work, why ever. So I do also check the etag too.

New code attached next post.

I've added a new file as I've found some things that really could not work as it should. Actually I can test it in 9 or 10 hours. I also asked a question within the code, as my problem yesterday was, that my "get time from file" returned the value of the old file (was the timestamp cached?).

Did you notice, that the "If file exists" at the beginning of your module works with case sensitive file names, while the download itself use case intensive file names?

Uhh. What an issue I've build in in the No.2 archive.

Corrected it in the new build.

My final thing after testing.

Its working with time only now. I had in the if contition a = instead a ==. Fixed

To be sure, the ETag check is still in it. Maybe there is a file replaced by a file with same timestamp. So the ETag should make it more sequre I think.

Here is my final version. I you agree it is fine, maybe we suggest it for DP8 core?

Ok. Now really my last for now. After iPhone generated

Notice: Undefined index: HTTP_IF_NONE_MATCH in _resumable_download_download()

in the drupal log when loading a page with a HTML5 video, I check for "IF_NONE_MATCH" before reading it and when not set, it only uses timestamp for modification check.

Hope I've done the settings here right and its shows correct as patch.

Before I created the patch, I've made code and comments a little bit nicer to read (and corrected some writing errors).

The notice is not wrong. The module is working without a patch.

This patch do

1) add a new feature to the module

2) and is actually for testing and not for productive usage

When there will be no bugs found, it hopefully will get into a new release of the module.

Till now, it works for me without any issue.

I was running in issues with large files (HTML5 video streaming).

Depending on the device I was watching the video, it took more and less long to hang up the whole webserver (had to restart it local on the device it is installed).

I've talked to the guy that made the server package I use and after he took a look at it, he told me it could be caused by delivering file data through PHP and I should use (my server runs lighttpd) X-Sendfile instead.

Ive worked on it using X-Sendfile and X-Sendfile2 (code is not cleaned up for this), but this would work on lighttpd only and sometimes some pictures get not transferred and I don't know why.

It works this way.

1. The first time a browser requests a file, it does it the normal way. The server responds the file with a tag in the answer header.

2. Next time the browser requests that file, it knows the file is already in the local cache and changes its request to "Send me that file, if its not modified since...".

Now there are two possibilities.

The file has been modified so the server do the same answer like in number one.

Or the server responds 304: "I do not send you that file becaus its equal to yours" and close the connection.

What proxies do is has nothing to do with this one.

What 304 do: It heavily reduces network traffic by not sending files to the same client over and over.

I switched to a Windows System and Apache some years ago. I'm using another plugin here as I didn't wanted to rewrite the XSendfile code for Apache again.

But I had no issues with the 304 part till the end.