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  • Upload File to Windows Azure Blob in Chunks through ASP.NET MVC, JavaScript and HTML5

    - by Shaun
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2013/07/01/upload-file-to-windows-azure-blob-in-chunks-through-asp.net.aspxMany people are using Windows Azure Blob Storage to store their data in the cloud. Blob storage provides 99.9% availability with easy-to-use API through .NET SDK and HTTP REST. For example, we can store JavaScript files, images, documents in blob storage when we are building an ASP.NET web application on a Web Role in Windows Azure. Or we can store our VHD files in blob and mount it as a hard drive in our cloud service. If you are familiar with Windows Azure, you should know that there are two kinds of blob: page blob and block blob. The page blob is optimized for random read and write, which is very useful when you need to store VHD files. The block blob is optimized for sequential/chunk read and write, which has more common usage. Since we can upload block blob in blocks through BlockBlob.PutBlock, and them commit them as a whole blob with invoking the BlockBlob.PutBlockList, it is very powerful to upload large files, as we can upload blocks in parallel, and provide pause-resume feature. There are many documents, articles and blog posts described on how to upload a block blob. Most of them are focus on the server side, which means when you had received a big file, stream or binaries, how to upload them into blob storage in blocks through .NET SDK.  But the problem is, how can we upload these large files from client side, for example, a browser. This questioned to me when I was working with a Chinese customer to help them build a network disk production on top of azure. The end users upload their files from the web portal, and then the files will be stored in blob storage from the Web Role. My goal is to find the best way to transform the file from client (end user’s machine) to the server (Web Role) through browser. In this post I will demonstrate and describe what I had done, to upload large file in chunks with high speed, and save them as blocks into Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Traditional Upload, Works with Limitation The simplest way to implement this requirement is to create a web page with a form that contains a file input element and a submit button. 1: @using (Html.BeginForm("About", "Index", FormMethod.Post, new { enctype = "multipart/form-data" })) 2: { 3: <input type="file" name="file" /> 4: <input type="submit" value="upload" /> 5: } And then in the backend controller, we retrieve the whole content of this file and upload it in to the blob storage through .NET SDK. We can split the file in blocks and upload them in parallel and commit. The code had been well blogged in the community. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public ActionResult About(HttpPostedFileBase file) 3: { 4: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 5: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 6: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(file.FileName); 7: var blockDataList = new Dictionary<string, byte[]>(); 8: using (var stream = file.InputStream) 9: { 10: var blockSizeInKB = 1024; 11: var offset = 0; 12: var index = 0; 13: while (offset < stream.Length) 14: { 15: var readLength = Math.Min(1024 * blockSizeInKB, (int)stream.Length - offset); 16: var blockData = new byte[readLength]; 17: offset += stream.Read(blockData, 0, readLength); 18: blockDataList.Add(Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)), blockData); 19:  20: index++; 21: } 22: } 23:  24: Parallel.ForEach(blockDataList, (bi) => 25: { 26: blob.PutBlock(bi.Key, new MemoryStream(bi.Value), null); 27: }); 28: blob.PutBlockList(blockDataList.Select(b => b.Key).ToArray()); 29:  30: return RedirectToAction("About"); 31: } This works perfect if we selected an image, a music or a small video to upload. But if I selected a large file, let’s say a 6GB HD-movie, after upload for about few minutes the page will be shown as below and the upload will be terminated. In ASP.NET there is a limitation of request length and the maximized request length is defined in the web.config file. It’s a number which less than about 4GB. So if we want to upload a really big file, we cannot simply implement in this way. Also, in Windows Azure, a cloud service network load balancer will terminate the connection if exceed the timeout period. From my test the timeout looks like 2 - 3 minutes. Hence, when we need to upload a large file we cannot just use the basic HTML elements. Besides the limitation mentioned above, the simple HTML file upload cannot provide rich upload experience such as chunk upload, pause and pause-resume. So we need to find a better way to upload large file from the client to the server.   Upload in Chunks through HTML5 and JavaScript In order to break those limitation mentioned above we will try to upload the large file in chunks. This takes some benefit to us such as - No request size limitation: Since we upload in chunks, we can define the request size for each chunks regardless how big the entire file is. - No timeout problem: The size of chunks are controlled by us, which means we should be able to make sure request for each chunk upload will not exceed the timeout period of both ASP.NET and Windows Azure load balancer. It was a big challenge to upload big file in chunks until we have HTML5. There are some new features and improvements introduced in HTML5 and we will use them to implement our solution.   In HTML5, the File interface had been improved with a new method called “slice”. It can be used to read part of the file by specifying the start byte index and the end byte index. For example if the entire file was 1024 bytes, file.slice(512, 768) will read the part of this file from the 512nd byte to 768th byte, and return a new object of interface called "Blob”, which you can treat as an array of bytes. In fact,  a Blob object represents a file-like object of immutable, raw data. The File interface is based on Blob, inheriting blob functionality and expanding it to support files on the user's system. For more information about the Blob please refer here. File and Blob is very useful to implement the chunk upload. We will use File interface to represent the file the user selected from the browser and then use File.slice to read the file in chunks in the size we wanted. For example, if we wanted to upload a 10MB file with 512KB chunks, then we can read it in 512KB blobs by using File.slice in a loop.   Assuming we have a web page as below. User can select a file, an input box to specify the block size in KB and a button to start upload. 1: <div> 2: <input type="file" id="upload_files" name="files[]" /><br /> 3: Block Size: <input type="number" id="block_size" value="512" name="block_size" />KB<br /> 4: <input type="button" id="upload_button_blob" name="upload" value="upload (blob)" /> 5: </div> Then we can have the JavaScript function to upload the file in chunks when user clicked the button. 1: <script type="text/javascript"> 1: 2: $(function () { 3: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 4: }); 5: });</script> Firstly we need to ensure the client browser supports the interfaces we are going to use. Just try to invoke the File, Blob and FormData from the “window” object. If any of them is “undefined” the condition result will be “false” which means your browser doesn’t support these premium feature and it’s time for you to get your browser updated. FormData is another new feature we are going to use in the future. It could generate a temporary form for us. We will use this interface to create a form with chunk and associated metadata when invoked the service through ajax. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 4: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 5: } 6: else { 7: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 8: return; 9: } 10: }); Each browser supports these interfaces by their own implementation and currently the Blob, File and File.slice are supported by Chrome 21, FireFox 13, IE 10, Opera 12 and Safari 5.1 or higher. After that we worked on the files the user selected one by one since in HTML5, user can select multiple files in one file input box. 1: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 2: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 3: var file = files[i]; 4: var fileSize = file.size; 5: var fileName = file.name; 6: } Next, we calculated the start index and end index for each chunks based on the size the user specified from the browser. We put them into an array with the file name and the index, which will be used when we upload chunks into Windows Azure Blob Storage as blocks since we need to specify the target blob name and the block index. At the same time we will store the list of all indexes into another variant which will be used to commit blocks into blob in Azure Storage once all chunks had been uploaded successfully. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10:  11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 14: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 15: var blocks = []; 16: var offset = 0; 17: var index = 0; 18: var list = ""; 19: while (offset < fileSize) { 20: var start = offset; 21: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 22:  23: blocks.push({ 24: name: fileName, 25: index: index, 26: start: start, 27: end: end 28: }); 29: list += index + ","; 30:  31: offset = end; 32: index++; 33: } 34: } 35: }); Now we have all chunks’ information ready. The next step should be upload them one by one to the server side, and at the server side when received a chunk it will upload as a block into Blob Storage, and finally commit them with the index list through BlockBlobClient.PutBlockList. But since all these invokes are ajax calling, which means not synchronized call. So we need to introduce a new JavaScript library to help us coordinate the asynchronize operation, which named “async.js”. You can download this JavaScript library here, and you can find the document here. I will not explain this library too much in this post. We will put all procedures we want to execute as a function array, and pass into the proper function defined in async.js to let it help us to control the execution sequence, in series or in parallel. Hence we will define an array and put the function for chunk upload into this array. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4:  5: // start to upload each files in chunks 6: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 7: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 8: var file = files[i]; 9: var fileSize = file.size; 10: var fileName = file.name; 11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: ... ... 14:  15: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 16: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 17: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 18: }); 19: }); 20: } 21: }); 22: }); As you can see, I used File.slice method to read each chunks based on the start and end byte index we calculated previously, and constructed a temporary HTML form with the file name, chunk index and chunk data through another new feature in HTML5 named FormData. Then post this form to the backend server through jQuery.ajax. This is the key part of our solution. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 15: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 16: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 17: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 18: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 19: var fd = new FormData(); 20: fd.append("name", block.name); 21: fd.append("index", block.index); 22: fd.append("file", blob); 23: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 24: $.ajax({ 25: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 26: data: fd, 27: processData: false, 28: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 29: type: "POST", 30: success: function (result) { 31: if (!result.success) { 32: alert(result.error); 33: } 34: callback(null, block.index); 35: } 36: }); 37: }); 38: }); 39: } 40: }); Then we will invoke these functions one by one by using the async.js. And once all functions had been executed successfully I invoked another ajax call to the backend service to commit all these chunks (blocks) as the blob in Windows Azure Storage. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); That’s all in the client side. The outline of our logic would be - Calculate the start and end byte index for each chunks based on the block size. - Defined the functions of reading the chunk form file and upload the content to the backend service through ajax. - Execute the functions defined in previous step with “async.js”. - Commit the chunks by invoking the backend service in Windows Azure Storage finally.   Save Chunks as Blocks into Blob Storage In above we finished the client size JavaScript code. It uploaded the file in chunks to the backend service which we are going to implement in this step. We will use ASP.NET MVC as our backend service, and it will receive the chunks, upload into Windows Azure Bob Storage in blocks, then finally commit as one blob. As in the client side we uploaded chunks by invoking the ajax call to the URL "/Home/UploadInFormData", I created a new action under the Index controller and it only accepts HTTP POST request. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: } 8: catch (Exception e) 9: { 10: error = e.ToString(); 11: } 12:  13: return new JsonResult() 14: { 15: Data = new 16: { 17: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 18: error = error 19: } 20: }; 21: } Then I retrieved the file name, index and the chunk content from the Request.Form object, which was passed from our client side. And then, used the Windows Azure SDK to create a blob container (in this case we will use the container named “test”.) and create a blob reference with the blob name (same as the file name). Then uploaded the chunk as a block of this blob with the index, since in Blob Storage each block must have an index (ID) associated with so that finally we can put all blocks as one blob by specifying their block ID list. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 9: var file = Request.Files[0]; 10: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 11:  12: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 13: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 14: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 15: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 16: } 17: catch (Exception e) 18: { 19: error = e.ToString(); 20: } 21:  22: return new JsonResult() 23: { 24: Data = new 25: { 26: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 27: error = error 28: } 29: }; 30: } Next, I created another action to commit the blocks into blob once all chunks had been uploaded. Similarly, I retrieved the blob name from the Request.Form. I also retrieved the chunks ID list, which is the block ID list from the Request.Form in a string format, split them as a list, then invoked the BlockBlob.PutBlockList method. After that our blob will be shown in the container and ready to be download. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult Commit() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 9: var ids = list 10: .Split(',') 11: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 12: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 13: .ToArray(); 14:  15: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 16: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 17: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 18: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 19: } 20: catch (Exception e) 21: { 22: error = e.ToString(); 23: } 24:  25: return new JsonResult() 26: { 27: Data = new 28: { 29: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 30: error = error 31: } 32: }; 33: } Now we finished all code we need. The whole process of uploading would be like this below. Below is the full client side JavaScript code. 1: <script type="text/javascript" src="~/Scripts/async.js"></script> 2: <script type="text/javascript"> 3: $(function () { 4: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 5: // assert the browser support html5 6: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 7: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 8: } 9: else { 10: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 11: return; 12: } 13:  14: // start to upload each files in chunks 15: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 16: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 17: var file = files[i]; 18: var fileSize = file.size; 19: var fileName = file.name; 20:  21: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 22: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 23: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 24: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 25: var blocks = []; 26: var offset = 0; 27: var index = 0; 28: var list = ""; 29: while (offset < fileSize) { 30: var start = offset; 31: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 32:  33: blocks.push({ 34: name: fileName, 35: index: index, 36: start: start, 37: end: end 38: }); 39: list += index + ","; 40:  41: offset = end; 42: index++; 43: } 44:  45: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 46: var putBlocks = []; 47: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 48: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 49: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 50: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 51: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 52: var fd = new FormData(); 53: fd.append("name", block.name); 54: fd.append("index", block.index); 55: fd.append("file", blob); 56: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 57: $.ajax({ 58: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 59: data: fd, 60: processData: false, 61: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 62: type: "POST", 63: success: function (result) { 64: if (!result.success) { 65: alert(result.error); 66: } 67: callback(null, block.index); 68: } 69: }); 70: }); 71: }); 72:  73: // invoke the functions one by one 74: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 75: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 76: var data = { 77: name: fileName, 78: list: list 79: }; 80: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 81: if (!result.success) { 82: alert(result.error); 83: } 84: else { 85: alert("done!"); 86: } 87: }); 88: }); 89: } 90: }); 91: }); 92: </script> And below is the full ASP.NET MVC controller code. 1: public class HomeController : Controller 2: { 3: private CloudStorageAccount _account; 4: private CloudBlobClient _client; 5:  6: public HomeController() 7: : base() 8: { 9: _account = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("DataConnectionString")); 10: _client = _account.CreateCloudBlobClient(); 11: } 12:  13: public ActionResult Index() 14: { 15: ViewBag.Message = "Modify this template to jump-start your ASP.NET MVC application."; 16:  17: return View(); 18: } 19:  20: [HttpPost] 21: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 22: { 23: var error = string.Empty; 24: try 25: { 26: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 27: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 28: var file = Request.Files[0]; 29: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 30:  31: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 32: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 33: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 34: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 35: } 36: catch (Exception e) 37: { 38: error = e.ToString(); 39: } 40:  41: return new JsonResult() 42: { 43: Data = new 44: { 45: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 46: error = error 47: } 48: }; 49: } 50:  51: [HttpPost] 52: public JsonResult Commit() 53: { 54: var error = string.Empty; 55: try 56: { 57: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 58: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 59: var ids = list 60: .Split(',') 61: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 62: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 63: .ToArray(); 64:  65: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 66: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 67: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 68: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 69: } 70: catch (Exception e) 71: { 72: error = e.ToString(); 73: } 74:  75: return new JsonResult() 76: { 77: Data = new 78: { 79: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 80: error = error 81: } 82: }; 83: } 84: } And if we selected a file from the browser we will see our application will upload chunks in the size we specified to the server through ajax call in background, and then commit all chunks in one blob. Then we can find the blob in our Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Optimized by Parallel Upload In previous example we just uploaded our file in chunks. This solved the problem that ASP.NET MVC request content size limitation as well as the Windows Azure load balancer timeout. But it might introduce the performance problem since we uploaded chunks in sequence. In order to improve the upload performance we could modify our client side code a bit to make the upload operation invoked in parallel. The good news is that, “async.js” library provides the parallel execution function. If you remembered the code we invoke the service to upload chunks, it utilized “async.series” which means all functions will be executed in sequence. Now we will change this code to “async.parallel”. This will invoke all functions in parallel. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallel(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); In this way all chunks will be uploaded to the server side at the same time to maximize the bandwidth usage. This should work if the file was not very large and the chunk size was not very small. But for large file this might introduce another problem that too many ajax calls are sent to the server at the same time. So the best solution should be, upload the chunks in parallel with maximum concurrency limitation. The code below specified the concurrency limitation to 4, which means at the most only 4 ajax calls could be invoked at the same time. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallelLimit(putBlocks, 4, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: });   Summary In this post we discussed how to upload files in chunks to the backend service and then upload them into Windows Azure Blob Storage in blocks. We focused on the frontend side and leverage three new feature introduced in HTML 5 which are - File.slice: Read part of the file by specifying the start and end byte index. - Blob: File-like interface which contains the part of the file content. - FormData: Temporary form element that we can pass the chunk alone with some metadata to the backend service. Then we discussed the performance consideration of chunk uploading. Sequence upload cannot provide maximized upload speed, but the unlimited parallel upload might crash the browser and server if too many chunks. So we finally came up with the solution to upload chunks in parallel with the concurrency limitation. We also demonstrated how to utilize “async.js” JavaScript library to help us control the asynchronize call and the parallel limitation.   Regarding the chunk size and the parallel limitation value there is no “best” value. You need to test vary composition and find out the best one for your particular scenario. It depends on the local bandwidth, client machine cores and the server side (Windows Azure Cloud Service Virtual Machine) cores, memory and bandwidth. Below is one of my performance test result. The client machine was Windows 8 IE 10 with 4 cores. I was using Microsoft Cooperation Network. The web site was hosted on Windows Azure China North data center (in Beijing) with one small web role (1.7GB 1 core CPU, 1.75GB memory with 100Mbps bandwidth). The test cases were - Chunk size: 512KB, 1MB, 2MB, 4MB. - Upload Mode: Sequence, parallel (unlimited), parallel with limit (4 threads, 8 threads). - Chunk Format: base64 string, binaries. - Target file: 100MB. - Each case was tested 3 times. Below is the test result chart. Some thoughts, but not guidance or best practice: - Parallel gets better performance than series. - No significant performance improvement between parallel 4 threads and 8 threads. - Transform with binaries provides better performance than base64. - In all cases, chunk size in 1MB - 2MB gets better performance.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • How to load stacking chunks on the fly?

    - by Brettetete
    I'm currently working on an infinite world, mostly inspired by minecraft. A Chunk consists of 16x16x16 blocks. A block(cube) is 1x1x1. This runs very smoothly with a ViewRange of 12 Chunks (12x16) on my computer. Fine. When I change the Chunk height to 256 this becomes - obviously - incredible laggy. So what I basically want to do is stacking chunks. That means my world could be [8,16,8] Chunks large. The question is now how to generate chunks on the fly? At the moment I generate not existing chunks circular around my position (near to far). Since I don't stack chunks yet, this is not very complex. As important side note here: I also want to have biomes, with different min/max height. So in Biome Flatlands the highest layer with blocks would be 8 (8x16) - in Biome Mountains the highest layer with blocks would be 14 (14x16). Just as example. What I could do would be loading 1 Chunk above and below me for example. But here the problem would be, that transitions between different bioms could be larger than one chunk on y. My current chunk loading in action For the completeness here my current chunk loading "algorithm" private IEnumerator UpdateChunks(){ for (int i = 1; i < VIEW_RANGE; i += ChunkWidth) { float vr = i; for (float x = transform.position.x - vr; x < transform.position.x + vr; x += ChunkWidth) { for (float z = transform.position.z - vr; z < transform.position.z + vr; z += ChunkWidth) { _pos.Set(x, 0, z); // no y, yet _pos.x = Mathf.Floor(_pos.x/ChunkWidth)*ChunkWidth; _pos.z = Mathf.Floor(_pos.z/ChunkWidth)*ChunkWidth; Chunk chunk = Chunk.FindChunk(_pos); // If Chunk is already created, continue if (chunk != null) continue; // Create a new Chunk.. chunk = (Chunk) Instantiate(ChunkFab, _pos, Quaternion.identity); } } // Skip to next frame yield return 0; } }

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  • Packing differently sized chunks of data into multiple bins

    - by knizz
    EDIT: It seems like this problem is called "Cutting stock problem" I need an algorithm that gives me the (space-)optimal arrangement of chunks in bins. One way would be put the bigger chunks in first. But see how that algorithm fails in this example: Chunks Bins ----------------------------- AAA BBB CC DD ( ) ( ) Algorithm Result ----------------------------- biggest first (AAABBB ) (CC ) optimal (AAACCDD) (BBB) "Biggest first" can't fit in DD. Maybe it helps to build a table like this: Size 1: --- Size 2: CC, DD Size 3: AAA, BBB Size 4: CCDD Size 5: AAACC, AAADD, BBBCC, BBBDD Size 6: AAABBB Size 7: AAACCDD, BBBCCDD Size 8: AAABBBCC, AAABBBDD Size 10: AAABBBCCDD

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  • Updating "Inactive" Chunks

    - by Conner Bryan
    In my game, the only chunks (4x4 areas of tiles) in memory are the ones that the player is in. However, chunks need to have updates applied to them over time. A (likely) well-known example would be MineCraft: even if the player isn't in a chunk, the wheat still needs to grow over time. My current solution is to call a method and pass in the time since the chunk was active.. but what if the chunk depends on nearby chunks for information, i.e. vines spreading or similar? Is there any reasonable solutions to this problem, or should I simply not depend on nearby chunks?

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  • Drawing chunks, and positioning the camera

    - by Troubleshoot
    I've seen many questions and answers regarding how to draw tiled maps but I can't really get my head around it. Many answers suggest either loading the visible part of the map, or loading and unloading chunks of the map. I've decided the best option would be to load chunks, but I'm slightly confused as to how this would be implemented. Currently I'm loading the full map to a 2D array of buffered images, then drawing it every time repaint is called. Q1: If I were to load chunks of the map, would I load the map as a whole then draw the necessary chunk(s), or load & unload the chunks as the player moves along, and if so, how? My second question regards the camera. I want the player to be in the centre of the X axis and the camera to follow it. I've thought of drawing everything in relation to the map and calculating the position of the camera in relation to the players coordinates on the map. So, to calculate the camera's X position I understand that I should use cameraX = playerX - (canvasWidth/2), but how should I calculate the Y position? I want the camera to only move up when the player reaches cameraHeight/2 but to move down when the player reaches 3/4(cameraHeight). Q2: Should I check for this in the same way I check for collision, and move the camera relative to the movement of the player until the player stops moving, or am I thinking about it in the wrong way?

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  • Making efficeint voxel engines using "chunks"

    - by Wardy
    Concept I'm currently looking in to how voxel engines work with a view to possibly making one myself. I see a lot of stuff like this ... https://sites.google.com/site/letsmakeavoxelengine/home/chunks ... which talks about how to go about reducing the draw calls. What I can't seem to understand is how it actually saves draw call counts on the basis of the logic being something like this ... Without chunks foreach voxel in myvoxels DrawIfVisible() With Chunks foreach chunk in mychunks DrawIfVisible() which then does ... foreach voxel in myvoxels DrawIfVisible() So surely you saved nothing ?!?! You still make a draw call for each visible voxel do you not? A visible voxel needs a draw call in either scenario. The only real saving I can see is that the logic that evaluates a chunk will be able to determine if a large number of voxels are visible or not effectively saving a bit of "is this chunk visible" cpu time. But it's the draw calls that interest me ... The fewer of those, the faster the application. EDIT: In case it makes any difference I will probably be using XNA (DX not OpenGL) for my engine so don't consider my choice of example in the link above my choice of technology. But this question is such that I doubt it would matter.

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  • How to break terrain (in blender) into Chunks for a game engine

    - by Red
    I've created an island in blender. 2048x2048 blender units. The engine developer wants me to split the terrain into 128x128 "chunks" so that would be 16x16 "chunks" from a top down view. The engine isn't using height maps, in order to allow caves, 3d overhangs, etc. I'm not in charge of the engine, so suggestions about that aren't needed here :/ I just need a good, seamless way to split a terrain mesh into 16x16 pieces without leaving holes. I'm very new to blender, so baby steps are very much welcomed :) Here's a quick render of what i've got so far. I added a plane to show sea level but i've since removed it. http://i.imgur.com/qTsoC.png

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  • Coding in large chunks ... Code verification skills

    - by Andrew
    As a follow up to my prev question: What is the best aproach for coding in a slow compilation environment To recap: I am stuck with a large software system with which a TDD ideology of "test often" does not work. And to make it even worse the features like pre-compiled headers/multi-threaded compilation/incremental linking, etc is not available to me - hence I think that the best way out would be to add the extensive logging into the system and to start "coding in large chunks", which I understand as code for a two-three hours first (as opposed to 15-20 mins in TDD) - thoroughly eyeball the code for a 15 minutes and only after all that do the compilation and run the tests. As I have been doing TDD for a quite a while, my code eyeballing / code verification skills got rusty (you don't really need this that much if you can quickly verify what you've done in 5 seconds by running a test or two) - so I am after a recommendations on how to learn these source code verification/error spotting skills again. I know I was able to do that easily some 5-10 years ago when I din't have much support from the compiler/unit testing tools I had until recently, thus there should be a way to get back to the basics.

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  • How do I efficiently generate chunks to fill entire screen when my player moves?

    - by Trixmix
    In my game I generate chunks when the player moves. The chunks are all generated on the fly, but currently I just created a simple flat 8X8 floor. What happens is that when he moves to a new chunk the chunk in the direction of the player gets generated and its neighboring chunks. This is not efficient because the generator does not fill the entire screen. I did try to use recursion but its not as fast as I would like it to be. My question is what would be an efficient way of doing so? How does minecraft do so? When I say this I mean just the way it PICKS which chunks to generate and in what order. Not how they generate or how they are saved in regions, just the order/way it generates them. I just want to know what is a good way to load chunks around the player.

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  • Windows 2003-R2-Server: Process "System" takes large chunks of CPU time

    - by Dabu
    I have a domain controller running 2003 R2. The server behaves very well when restarted daily, however, each day it is not restarted, there's a process called "System" that takes enourmous chunks of CPU time (up to 95%). The server supports AD, WINS, DNS, has Kaspersky Endpoint Security running, and manages backups via Arcserve 15. When I tried so far: Process Explorer (ex-Sysinternals) shows that the "System" process has no sub-processes. In the "Threads" tab of the detailled view I can see that 90% of the CPU time is used up by "ntkrnlpa.exe+0x803c0". The "Interrupts" process is running at 3-5% of CPU time, I'm not sure if this accounts for the amount of CPU time that System takes.

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  • Smaller Chunks of Data

    - by Googler
    I am using a web service to fetch a large amount of data. While sending the request, i receive an error as: Error: ** Please request data in smaller chunks.** Is this a problem with the web services i am fetching the information or a normal rule for fetching the data through internet. May i know the cause of this problem and also how to send the data in smaller chunks to avoid this error.

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  • Deleting huge chunks of data from mysql innodb

    - by mingyeow
    I need to delete a huge chunk of my data in my production database, which runs about 100GB in size. If possible, i would like to minimize my downtime. My selection criteria for deleting is likely to be DELETE * FROM POSTING WHERE USER.ID=5 AND UPDATED_AT<100 What is the best way to delete it? Build an index? Write a sequential script that deletes via paginating through the rows 1000 at a time?

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  • What is a good program for storing "chunks" of commonly used source code

    - by Rob Wiley
    I've looked at CodeLocker (poorly styled and relatively unflexible, but free) and Source Code Library (Overzone software - very nicely styled, looks flexible, but very expensive - $80). Ideally, I'm looking for a relatively simple, inexpensive program (not an online website) that I can save text data (source code) with a title and keywords, maybe even a description. It would also have some type of search functionality.

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  • Split a binary file into chunks c++

    - by L4nce0
    I've been bashing my head against trying to first divide up a file into chunks, for the purpose of sending over sockets. I can read / write a file easily without splitting it into chunks. The code below runs, works, kinda. It will write a textfile and has a garbage character. Which if this was just for txt, no problem. Jpegs aren't working with said garbage. Been at it for a few days, so I've done my research, and it's time to get some help. I do want to stick strictly to binary readers, as this need to handle any file. I've seen a lot of slick examples out there. (none of them worked for me with jpgs) Mostly something along the lines of while(file)... I subscribe to the, if you know the size, use a for-loop, not a while-loop camp. Thank you for the help!! vector<char*> readFile(const char* fn){ vector<char*> v; ifstream::pos_type size; char * memblock; ifstream file; file.open(fn,ios::in|ios::binary|ios::ate); if (file.is_open()) { size = fileS(fn); file.seekg (0, ios::beg); int bs = size/3; // arbitrary. Actual program will use the socket send size int ws = 0; int i = 0; for(i = 0; i < size; i+=bs){ if(i+bs > size) ws = size%bs; else ws = bs; memblock = new char [ws]; file.read (memblock, ws); v.push_back(memblock); } } else{ exit(-4); } return v; } int main(int argc, char **argv) { vector<char*> v = readFile("foo.txt"); ofstream myFile ("bar.txt", ios::out | ios::binary); for(vector<char*>::iterator it = v.begin(); it!=v.end(); ++it ){ myFile.write(*it,strlen(*it)); } }

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  • MySQL script to delete data in chunks until everything lower then id has been deleted

    - by Chriswede
    I need an MySQL Skript which does the following: delete chunks of the database until it has deleted all link_id's greater then 10000 exmaple: x = 10000 DELETE FROM pligg_links WHERE link_id > x and link_id < x+10000 x = x + 10000 ... So it would delete DELETE FROM pligg_links WHERE link_id > 10000 and link_id < 20000 then DELETE FROM pligg_links WHERE link_id > 20000 and link_id < 30000 until all id's less then 10000 have been removed I need this because the database is very very big (more then a gig) thank in advance

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  • Render asp.net repeater as-and-when chunks of html is ready (streaming)

    - by sash
    The problem is to render huge reports. Basically we have lots of data that get rendered in html reports (mostly using repeater or gridview). As it so happens, the data started out small and now we have tons of it. There are lots of such reports already built so total rewrite is not an option. Heck, the business is not even letting us page the data. Now server memory is shooting up each time we try to render some reports. So the question is - is there some way we can bind data to repeater and have it stream html to browser as and when chunks are ready? That way we hope to not bring all that data into app server at once. I'm thinking we'll use a datareader or something to get parts of data and render it to browser. Any pointers, links, ideas?

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  • DATA REQUEST IN SMALLER CHUNKS?

    - by Googler
    Hi folks, I have developed a windows services to retrieve all response data provided by the EPO webservices. While scrapping the data through internet, after few hours i recieve a error message as: Error: ** Please request bibliographic data in smaller chunks.** Here bibliographic data is one kind of the service provided by the EPO webservice. I hope there is no error with my inputs and the service provided. I dont know what this error means. Is it related to the internet connection or with my webservices? can anyone please help me on what this error actually mean?

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  • MySQL Split Time Ranges into Smaller Chunks

    - by Neren
    Hello all, I've recently been tasked with finishing a PHP/MySQL web app when the developer quit last week. I'm no MySQL expert, so I apologize if this is an intensely simple question. I've searched SO for the better part of two days trying to find a relatively easy solution to my problem, which is as follows. Problem in a Nutshell: I have a MySQL table full of start and end datetime (GMT -5) & UNIX Timestamp values covering durations of irregular length and need to break/split/divide them into more-regular time chunks (5 minutes). I'm not after a count of row entries per time chunk/bucket/period, if that makes any sense. Data Example: started, ended, started_UNIX, ended_UNIX 2010-10-25 15:12:33, 2010-10-25 15:47:09, 1288033953, 1288036029 What I'm hoping to get: 2010-10-25 15:12:33, 2010-10-25 15:15:00, 1288033953, 1288037700 2010-10-25 15:15:00, 2010-10-25 15:20:00, 1288037700, 1288038000 2010-10-25 15:20:00, 2010-10-25 15:25:00, 1288038000, 1288038300 2010-10-25 15:25:00, 2010-10-25 15:30:00, 1288038300, 1288038600 2010-10-25 15:30:00, 2010-10-25 15:35:00, 1288038600, 1288038900 2010-10-25 15:35:00, 2010-10-25 15:40:00, 1288038900, 1288039200 2010-10-25 15:40:00, 2010-10-25 15:45:00, 1288039200, 1288039500 2010-10-25 15:45:00, 2010-10-25 15:47:09, 1288039500, 1288039629 If you're interested, here's the quick & dirty on the app and why I need the data: App overview: The application receives very simple POST requests generated by a basic sensor device when its input pins go to ground, which submits an INSERT query to the database where MySQL records a timestamp (as started). When the input pins return from a grounded state, the device submits a different POST request, which causes the PHP app to submit an UPDATE query, where a modification time timestamp is inserted (as ended). My employer recently changed the periodic reporting unit of measure from Seconds "On" Per Day to Seconds "On" Per 5 Minute Interval. I had formulated what I thought would be a workable solution, but when I looked at it on paper, it looked like Rube Goldberg's nightmare constructed in MySQL, so that was out. Any suggestions as to how to break these spans into 5 minute blocks? Keeping it all in MySQL would be my preference, though I'll take any suggestions. Thank you for any suggestions you may have. Again, I apologize if this is a no-brainer. If I ask any additional questions of the SO collective consciousness in the future, I'll try to word them a bit better. Any help will be happily welcomed. Thanks, Neren

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  • Heuristic to identify if a series of 4 bytes chunks of data are integers or floats

    - by flint
    What's the best heuristic I can use to identify whether a chunk of X 4-bytes are integers or floats? A human can do this easily, but I wanted to do it programmatically. I realize that since every combination of bits will result in a valid integer and (almost?) all of them will also result in a valid float, there is no way to know for sure. But I still would like to identify the most likely candidate (which will virtually always be correct; or at least, a human can do it). For example, let's take a series of 4-bytes raw data and print them as integers first and then as floats: 1 1.4013e-45 10 1.4013e-44 44 6.16571e-44 5000 7.00649e-42 1024 1.43493e-42 0 0 0 0 -5 -nan 11 1.54143e-44 Obviously they will be integers. Now, another example: 1065353216 1 1084227584 5 1085276160 5.5 1068149391 1.33333 1083179008 4.5 1120403456 100 0 0 -1110651699 -0.1 1195593728 50000 These will obviously be floats. PS: I'm using C++ but you can answer in any language, pseudo code or just in english.

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  • Deleting huge chunks of data from mysql innodb

    - by ming yeow
    I need to delete a huge chunk of my data in my production database, which runs about 100GB in size. If possible, i would like to minimize my downtime. My selection criteria for deleting is likely to be DELETE * FROM POSTING WHERE USER.ID=5 AND UPDATED_AT<100 What is the best way to delete it? Build an index? Write a sequential script that deletes via paginating through the rows 1000 at a time?

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  • HTTP Data chunks over multiple packets?

    - by myforwik
    What is the correct way for a HTTP server to send data over multiple packets? For example I want to transfer a file, the first packet I send is: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-type: application/force-download Content-Type: application/download Content-Type: application/octet-stream Content-Description: File Transfer Content-disposition: attachment; filename=test.dat Content-Transfer-Encoding: chunked 400 <first 1024 bytes here> 400 <next 1024 bytes here> 400 <next 1024 bytes here> Now I need to make a new packet, if I just send: 400 <next 1024 bytes here> All the clients close there connections on me and the files are cut short. What headers do I put in a second packet to continue on with the data stream?

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  • Powershell - Splitting variable into chunks

    - by Andrew
    I have written a query in Powershell interrogating a F5 BIG-IP box through it's iControl API to bring back CPU usage etc. Using this code (see below) I can return the data back into a CSV format which is fine. However the $csvdata variable contains all the data. I need to be able to take this variable and for each line split each column of data into a seperate variable. The output currently looks like this: timestamp,"Utilization" 1276181160,2.3282800000e+00 Any advice would be most welcome $SystemStats = (Get-F5.iControl).SystemStatistics ### Allocate a new Query Object and add the inputs needed $Query = New-Object -TypeName iControl.SystemStatisticsPerformanceStatisticQuery $Query.object_name = $i $Query.start_time = $startTime $Query.end_time = 0 $Query.interval = $interval $Query.maximum_rows = 0 ### Make method call passing in an array of size one with the specified query $ReportData = $SystemStats.get_performance_graph_csv_statistics( (,$Query) ) ### Allocate a new encoder and turn the byte array into a string $ASCII = New-Object -TypeName System.Text.ASCIIEncoding $csvdata = $ASCII.GetString($ReportData[0].statistic_data)

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  • Creating reusable chunks of Linq to SQL

    - by tia
    Hi, I am trying to break up horrible linq to sql queries to make them a bit more readable. Say I want to return all orders for product which in the previous year had more than 100 orders. So, original query is: from o in _context.Orders where (from o1 in _context.Orders where o1.Year == o.Year - 1 && o1.Product == o.Product select o1).Count() > 100 select o; Messy. What I'd like to be able to do is to be able to break it down, eg: private IEnumerable<Order> LastSeasonOrders(Order order) { return (from o in _context.Orders where o.Year == order.Year - 1 && o.Product == order.Product select o); } which then lets me change the original query to: from o in _context.Orders where LastSeasonOrders(o).Count() > 100 select o; This doesn't seem to work, as I get method Blah has no supported translation to SQL when the query is run. Any quick tips on the correct way to achieve this?

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