Orphaned files solution proposal

[wilfre]

Hi. Since I can't PM yeppie directly I'll make the proposal publicly.

Since the only correct way to upload a file and attach it within a message is to wait until download finishes, the only way to solve this common problem with orphaned attachments is to make a change into forum scripting in such a way that starting an upload process should block the "Sublit" button until the upload process finishes (successfully or with a failure). It the former case I think it should somehow inform the user that attachement will not be placed within the message. Of course in case of multiple attachments upload the blocker should block the button until the last one triggers finished.

[yeppie]

Thank you for your proposal, wilfre! That would be a good solution but messing with the script would mean trouble after the next software update. so this could only be an official change in the phpbb software.
At least orphaned attachments have become very rare recently ...

[wilfre]

For tracking those updates you could use something like git or even private github repository. You receive an update, copy it on top of your reposotiry, check that the scripting haven't broken your updates and then commit. After that you just update your running environment from your repo. It shouldn't be that hard as you think. You also could even use something like community version of PHPStorm or other good IDE with git support.

[wilfre]

And there's another proposal let you me not spawn another thread for this. You could also attach a special table for attachements within which you could track: post ID, filename and md5/sha256 hash of the file uploaded (for the file itself you should compute hashes for a version of the file which has all player related info removed, like ID3 tags). This will help you fight dupes effectively. I know this is not a frequent problem too but I have seen some of occurences here on the forum.