Open source app that provides YouSendIt style functionality?

Question

I'm looking for an open source webapp I can install that provides functionality similar to YouSendIt. Functionality desire includes:

• Users with an account can upload files through a web interface to a server.
• User can put in email addresses, recipients receive a unique URL to the server allowing them to download the file (which is streamed to prevent unauthorized access).
• Account management, bandwidth tracking, billing, these are extra features that are nice but not essential.

Obviously this isn't that tricky, file uploads, generate unique URLs, send emails, stream files. But I would rather not invent the wheel if there is something decent out there.

If there is no such app, what framework or CMS would you code it in? Which provides most of these tools already builtin?

Answer 1

I also don't know of any open source project like this. It's probably because it is quite a simple application and there are already free services (like YouSendIt) that do the job.

If you find YouSendIt useful, why not pay for it? You will save yourself time and effort coding your own solution.

It you really do need to code your own solution you could use a service like Amazon S3 to store the files.

Answer 2

I'm not sure that this would take much time to code at all, possibly less than an hour if you are familiar with a language. I'd use stock PHP, storing the users in a MYSQL database.

Answer 3

I don't know of this exact type of system, but you might look into something like paFileDB which has many of the required features, with the exception of the email functionality. This provides you a base to code from rather than starting from scratch.

Other than that, I'd advise building this in whatever framework and language you're most comfortable with. This can be done in just about any language, PHP, Python, Perl, etc. reasonably quickly and painlessly. I do however strenuously disagree that this would take an "hour" to code, if you're actually planning on building a robust application/server with anything more than the most basic features.

EDIT: One more you might find interesting as a base, FileChucker is a PHP and Perl solution that's got a ton of features, including the ability to do email notifications of uploads/downloads and file management from the browser, etc. Again I don't think it's quite what you're looking for but it might be interesting for you as a starting point.

Answer 4

I have been looking for the same myself. To create a way for external users to submit files for random projects/competitions etc. And in addition to that send files to any email on specified domains. I don't want a site that can be exploited for personal file sharing.

None that I have found does this specifically, you could go for the hosted solution from yousendit, sitedrop, but that is rather pricey.

I have found this open source solution that you probably can tweak to fit your needs and look.

And also a non free version from XIGLA (sorry can't post a link, new user, doh..) that I'm not sure how much you can customize, but seem to provide a decent service. Currently at less than $100. That solution also offers amazon S3 support, which is a plus.

Answer 5

Hi,

The issue with hosting this sort of functionality yourself or in shared hosting is php file upload limitations. To go around, one has to use CGI in C,Perl,whatever. PHP (5 at least) does not allow progress bars on file uploads.

These are nothing that advanced but get the job done: http://uber-uploader . sourceforge . net/ UBER-UPLOADER - a few issues to configure, but it works well. GUI is not nice and there is no management tool - it's not supposed to have I guess.

http : // ecosmear . com / relay / RELAY A very promising solution, great GUI, user accounts, management, previewing, nice progress bar, but a few bugs make it a challenge and a risk to use it... too bad.

Regards SM