[ic] Softgood Downloads

[Paul Jordan]

From: "Rick Bragg" <lists at gmnet.net>
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2009 3:57 PM
To: <interchange-users at icdevgroup.org>
Subject: Re: [ic] Softgood Downloads

> On Mon, 2009-02-09 at 08:24 -0800, Paul Jordan wrote:
>> From: "Tommy Pruitt" <tpruitt at pruittcom.com>
>> Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2009 12:21 PM
>> To: <interchange-users at icdevgroup.org>
>> Subject: [ic] Softgood Downloads
>>
>> > Is it possible to create an item that is a software download?
>> > Assign $0 to the software and not have the customers go through the 
>> > whole
>> > checkout process?
>> >
>> > Thanks
>> > Tommy
>> >
>> >
>>
>> Whoops. shootin blanks...
>>
>> Tom, yes it is possible out of the box.  If you are going to do a lot of
>> business this way, or if the downloads are very large, then you'll want 
>> to
>> venture into a custom download script which can be found here
>> http://www.interchange.rtfm.info/downloads/usertags.html called enable
>> downloads.
>>
>> Here some advice on the built in download stuff that comes with IC:
>> 
>> http://www.icdevgroup.org/pipermail/interchange-users/2001-November/014921.html
>>
>> The built in stuff uses the product tables fields: dowload, dl_type &
>> dl_location
>>
>> Download
>>
>> Paul Jordan
>>   Gish Network
>>   For Print, Web, and Life
>>   t.626.275.2517 / f.866.401.2657
>>   www.gishnetwork.com
>>
>
>
> I'm jumping in on this thread, but this is very important to me now.
>
> Are there any posts that discuss the scope of this tag, and how and
> where this tag should be used?
>
> I am developing a site that will allow for downloads (and streaming) of
> media after purchase, and I was thinking of simply using the dl_type an
> dl_location fields, but that will fall very short.  ie. a product in my
> catalog will have downloads for multiple files (not just one), and allow
> for streaming of media files via a "flash" file.
>
> Any direction?
> Thanks!
> Rick

I don't know about streaming but for downloading it's great. It doesn't use 
IC to serve the download, but let's Apache do it - as it should.

http://www.icdevgroup.org/pipermail/interchange-users/2002-March/018462.html

The tag is really for creating a way to make short lived random symlinks to 
the goods that are in a protected directory. So, you can say it is really 
delivery centric. What it delivers is up to you to make happen.  I had an 
email system that used this to create the delivery, but I had to on my own - 
upon request - find (read SQL) relevant email attachments, zip them all up, 
create the new zip file THEN tap on enable-downloads to create the Apache 
only secure delivery. In the end, it was two or three tags used in 
conjunction to make it all happen.

Also, when I say "secure" I mean that you don't need to put the files in a 
public directory, and the links used to download are as random as you need 
them to be I.e., 8 characters? 20 characters? Then, you determine how long 
you want to let those symlinks sexist via a cron - or whatever.

I think Mike made the tag for me actually - that post I link to is one of 
the ways I used it at the time. I've used it many ways since.

If softgoods are popular, I am sure I can probably write up something and 
get my tags together for everyone. But it would have to be in a couple weeks 
as I am pretty busy right now. That said if you wanted to sleuth it out 
yourself, I can get the tags I made/used to do all the tricks - any time. 
I'm pretty sure the email one reads the files from a table (the files are 
written to a table) - so not sure how much use it would be to you.

HTH

Paul Jordan
  Gish Network
  For Print, Web, and Life
  t.626.275.2517 / f.866.401.2657
  www.gishnetwork.com