A Very simple uploader

Ever needed to upload a file to a remote server? Perhaps you didn't need anything special or advanced, perhaps you didn't want to install a whole application suite with features you didn't really need. Maybe just a simple area for your clients or staff to share documents. Maybe you just need a simple way to upload files to your home server.

Perhaps you require your clients or staff to send confidential documents. In this case, email may not be a suitable choice. (well, unless your client has PGP installed) If you have an SSL certificate, this script will help you accomplish this.

Ever wanted to provide web based access to unix commands (via pipes)?

This script can help complete your existing intranet system, provide a members area to exchange files and allow web based access to simple unix pipes.

Easy setup

Set up is straight forward, 3 simple steps.

Edit the script

Set configuration variables. You can specify multiple upload areas if you wish.

Password protect it

It has no password protection built in, instead it relies on your web server configuration. (GenieGate supports apache style password files if you require membership management, for example, you can limit uploads to people in the "admin" group)

Make upload area(s) writable

This step depends on your server configuration. You may need to set the upload areas to a permission of 777.

If you're experienced with installing CGI scripts. (you understand file permissions) you could easily install this script in less time then it takes to read the instructions.

Unix pipes

Pipes are a completely optional feature, by default they are turned off. Their utility is in providing a quick way to process data with shell commands. (HINT: use multiple areas to provide access to different options and commands)

If you desire, you can have files "uploaded" into a unix command instead of a directory. In this case, you just make the directory a pipe.

The uploaded file is piped into the commands standard input. Setting this up is only marginally more difficult than a simple upload directory. This feature provides convenient web access to unix commands.

When using a pipe, the environment variables WANT_FILENAME and REMOTE_FILENAME are made available to the program. (You can use these in shell scripts, if you want) WANT_FILENAME is the name (sans non-safe characters) the user wanted to use for a filename. REMOTE_FILENAME is the name of the file as reported by their browser.

Thats all! a truly simple file uploading script.