Req:Media Upload/Stream Module

I assume you are talking about the filestore module.
I am not exactly sure if there is anything different in allowing files to be downloaded to media being streamed. but at this stage the filestore module stores it's files in the database in an base64 encoding, which makes it difficult to store files of any real large size. the maximum with out changing any of the default php and mysql parameters is about 500k

We have been having sum dicussions on and off about implementing a type of file cache api which all modules like filestore, image, event, etc can use to upload files and store themfor uses to download, or even use for adminstration for images that are displayed as apart of the content, and also allow the uploading of much larger files.

This is something that I would like to implement, but at this stage my main priority is to get filestore updated for 4.1.0 and get rid of some bug that are still anoying me. But this is somewhere that I am intending to take filestore.

Gordon.

Download vs. streaming

There is no difference unless you implement specific "streaming" software -- many client-side apps will buffer downloads to give the appearance of streaming, esp. with playlists, etc.

Files in DB / File Cache

Databases in generally are not suited for storing binary info -- images, music, non-text files, etc. Most document management systems keep files on disk (a "file cache") and store meta-data about the file, including its filesystem location, in the database. See also Netjuke for an example of an MP3 library that keeps all files on disk, but meta-data in the database.

So, smaller / low number of files could be kept in the DB, but ideally filestore is updated/replaced by a "file cache" where arbitrary binary objects can be stored, and accessed from various other modules. Perhaps something like node.php?type=binary&id=1023, where "binary" refers to the filecache.module.

After doing some investigation over the weekend on exactly how php does file uploads and found that php does really have a file upload support unlike asp, I realised that because it puts the file directly on disk and functions like move_upload_file() there is no need to read it into memory and you can just move it into the filecache.
So this means that working with it on disk would be much easier.
After I have got the clean url's fixed completely and some other stuff I need to do for work, I will look further at changing it.

With file.inc in core, this doesn't seem to be applicable anymore.