metalink native suppport

[Alexandra Sava]

Hi all,

My name is Alexandra and I'm interested in "Adding native support for
metalink" project listed on [1] within GSOC.
So, as discussed here[2] there is a specific api, but the link[3] is
not valid anymore.
Can somebody suggest me in what parts of the code I should be looking,
in order to implement this feature?

Thanks,
Alexandra

[1] http://www.metalinker.org/ideas.html
[2] http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1751
[3] http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/extensions/downloads-api

[PhistucK]

Here is the download API proposal -

https://docs.google.com/a/chromium.org/document/d/12rNimeeGaA8jEV60PPKtT4pmJYmY9ae_edl3hJyoXYE/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1

(The page that was not valid, to which you linked, had a suggestion to go to another page, where I got this.)

And the implementation has already started. So, you can play with it by using chrome.experimental.downloads with a Chrome canary build (enable Experimental Extensions APIs in about:flags first).

Here is the preliminary documentation -

http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/trunk/experimental.downloads.html

However, Google Summer Of Code proposals are (I think, usually) about C++ implementations, rather than about creating Chrome extensions, so you should check with a mentor or a representative of the project for more information (unless the proposal explicitly says it is an extension). This can be done by posting to chromium-discuss, most probably.

☆PhistucK

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[Ant Bryan]

On Mar 20, 2:05 pm, PhistucK <phist...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Here is the download API proposal -https://docs.google.com/a/chromium.org/document/d/12rNimeeGaA8jEV60PP...

>
> (The page that was not valid, to which you linked, had a suggestion to go
> to another page, where I got this.)
>
> And the implementation has already started. So, you can play with it by
> using chrome.experimental.downloads with a Chrome canary build (enable
> Experimental Extensions APIs in about:flags first).

> Here is the preliminary documentation -http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/trunk/experimental.downloads...

>
> However, Google Summer Of Code proposals are (I think, usually) about C++
> implementations, rather than about creating Chrome extensions, so you
> should check with a mentor or a representative of the project for more
> information (unless the proposal explicitly says it is an extension). This
> can be done by posting to chromium-discuss, most probably.
>

> ☆*PhistucK*

>
> On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 13:06, Alexandra Sava <alexandrasav...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>
> > Hi all,
>
> > My name is Alexandra and I'm interested in "Adding native support for
> > metalink" project listed on [1] within GSOC.
> > So, as discussed here[2] there is a specific api, but the link[3] is
> > not valid anymore.
> > Can somebody suggest me in what parts of the code I should be looking,
> > in order to implement this feature?
>
> > Thanks,
> > Alexandra
>
> > [1]http://www.metalinker.org/ideas.html
> > [2]http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1751
> > [3]

> >http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/extensions/downlo...

thanks for those pointers, PhistucK.

yes, the GSoC proposal is for native support.

we have another student who started work on an extension as a
precursor to native support tho.

details are here: http://thesundaram.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/metalinks-chrome-extension/
downloadable here: http://bit.ly/chrome-metalink-downloader

he did run into a some limitations tho:

"For downloading the file, I use the chrome experimental downloads
API.
However, there are a number of limitations with the API.

1. For example, I would have to checksum the file using XHR and
download the file using experiemental downloads API. This means the
same file would have to be downloaded twice to check for errors in the
data.
2. Metalinks provide infomation about multiple mirrors. Thus, multi-
sourced downloads is theoretically possible. However, the downloads
API does not have options for that.
3. If a particular piece is erroneous, the API does not allow you to
download the piece alone from another mirror.

Basically, what the extension does is really really minimal and we
would want to expand on it to make use of all the advantages of
metalinks.

So, I was wondering if NPAPI plugins would solve all these issues. I
haven't developed one before. But, I do know that you get a lot more
control with the plugin as you are not extending the browser's
functionality as in the case of extensions.

Has anyone worked on a download manager with NPAPI before?"


--
(( Anthony Bryan ... Metalink [ http://www.metalinker.org ]
  )) Easier, More Reliable, Self Healing Downloads

[PhistucK]

I really do not think you should turn to NPAPI in this case, if you want to integrate it into Chrome eventually, it is a quite unrelated approach/model, I believe.

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☆PhistucK

[Ant Bryan]

thanks PhistucK! no, we do not want NPAPI. we are working on this as
an extension first to demonstrate it.

Metalink Downloader has progressed nicely: http://code.google.com/p/metalink-chrome-extension/

there are a couple issues that we are working on:
http://code.google.com/p/metalink-chrome-extension/issues/list

1) the extension processes & downloads metalinks already, but we want
it to work depending on MIME type or possibly file extension (in the
event that the server is misconfigured and does not server the proper
MIME type). what is the best way to do this?

2) is there a way to make use of user's download settings in Chrome
for Download Location and Save as?
right now we use:

chrome.experimental.downloads.download({url:
r,saveAs:true},function(id) {});
for this, I think we want saveAs:false (or maybe have it toggle-able
or detect the user's settings, if that is possible?)

3) it's been suggested that we could hash parts of a file with HTML5
FileSystem blob. best way to do it?
4) we were also told onChanged event contains error information if a
download fails. a handler for this event might fallback to a mirror.
is this our best choice?

thank you again for the help!

On Apr 9, 3:08 am, PhistucK <phist...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I really do not think you should turn to NPAPI in this case, if you want to
> integrate it into Chrome eventually, it is a quite unrelated
> approach/model, I believe.
>

> "Chromium-extensions" group.> To post to this group, send email to chromium-extensi...@chromium.org.

> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
>

> chromium-extensions+unsubscr...@chromium.org.> For more options, visit this group at
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> http://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/group/chromium-extensions/?hl=en.
>
>
>
> --
>
> ☆*PhistucK*