Fetching files using HTTP?

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Mc Spooney - 22 Oct 2006 15:57 GMT

I know I can use openStream() but does that fetch the whole file before
reading or can u pysically read it across the network ?

Ie. i want to read some of the conrtents of large file but without the
overhead of having to pull the entire thing across the network first.

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Matt Humphrey - 24 Oct 2006 16:38 GMT

>I know I can use openStream() but does that fetch the whole file before
> reading or can u pysically read it across the network ?
>
> Ie. i want to read some of the conrtents of large file but without the
> overhead of having to pull the entire thing across the network first.

You cannot physically read the file across the network with openStream.
Your request goes to a service on the file's host which does the reading for
you. There is a little-used protocol for selecting a range of a document,
but I'm not sure it's honored by typical web servers or even used anymore.
If you are writing the web service yourself you can always include
parameters for the file section to read and you'll only get those parts.

Matt Humphrey matth@ivizNOSPAM.com http://www.iviz.com/

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