From: Dmitry Borodaenko <d.borodaenko@...>
Date: 2003-11-04T04:37:19+09:00
Subject: Re: CGI uses file size to distinguish between regular values and files

On Mon, Nov 03, 2003 at 11:40:48PM +0900, Austin Ziegler wrote:
> Why should I have to make that distinction in *my* code? I've got a
> Perl app that I plan to port over to Ruby at some point, and it allows
> file uploads (up to a couple megabytes in size). Indeed, the way that
> I deal with the file uploads never touches the filesystem from the
> perspective of my application (the file "string" goes directly into a
> MySQL database). If I have to step into my own filehandling, then I
> may not port this app to Ruby even though it's a fine candidate for it
> otherwise.

You've missed the question in the beginning of this thread:

   For starters, how would one move a small file, treated as StringIO,
   to another location? With Tempfile, you just do Tempfile#local_path,
   and move away. But it's not so straight forward with StringIO.

Obviously, asker _wants_ his own file handling.

Since I do that in Samizdat, I know at least one reason for that: I
don't want to add two extra layers of indirection (Ruby and SQL) between
Apache (or rsync or Gnutella) and a hundred-megabyte video file on disk.

> The library should provide me the raw data. If I decide something is a file
> and want to take some shortcuts with it, then the library can provide me
> additional information (e.g., CGI.tempfile?(parameter_index)) and
> functionality to access that implementation detail, but I should never
> *have* to make the distinction in my application code. Ever.

YMMV. I'd rather learn the difference between StringIO and Tempfile
_once_, than learn special API for handling this difference in each new
library I use. And introspection API is in Ruby for a reason, too ;)

Not that I object to this behaviour of CGI module being more explicitly
documented at least in comments in cgi.rb.

-- 
Dmitry Borodaenko