Droplet
From Wikanual
Contents |
Upload via droplets
On Apple computers you can have so called droplets. The INTERDUBS droplet will upload all files and folders that you drop on to into the system.
You can drag and drop folders and files onto the new droplet. INTERDUBS will maintain the folder structure for the uploaded file.
There is a progress bar that indicates how the upload is going.
Droplet creation
Droplets will be generated on the fly for you and are very small. They contain all the information that is needed to connect to INTERDUBS and put content into the folder that you created the droplet in. There is no configuration, password etc that you would need to add. All necessary information is self contained inside of the droplet that you created.
A droplet gets created when you are in a 
folder or an upload screen in INTERDUBS. Simply click on the 
generate droplet icon. INTERDUBS will make a droplet for the folder that you are in and will download of the droplet file to your computer.
delivered in a dmg file
Safari will download and actually mount the dmg file. In Firefox or Chrome you will see a download dialog. In these cases you click on the dmg file to mount it. Inside the dmg you see the INTERDUBS droplet file that you drag to onto your desktop or into a folder of your choice. Once you copied the droplet out of the dmg you do not need the mounted disk image any longer.
Usage
When you drop files or folders onto the droplet then they will be uploaded into the INTERDUBS folder that you have created the droplet in. You can have as many droplets as you like. They will have the name of the folder that they were created in. But you can rename them to anything that makes sense for you. The information where to upload files to is stored internally in the droplet.
Give droplets to others
If you send a droplet to somebody else then they can also add content to INTERDUBS with it. This can be helpful in cases where Client_side_uploads are not the best choice. Files larger than 2GB, folder structures or lots of files are potential use cases.
Timing
After a file has not been modified for 60 seconds INTERDUBS will process it. Depending on the size of the of file this might take a little while. The 60 second time out value can be reconfigured on a per segment basis. Please get in touch if this needs to be changed for your company.
Technical details
INTERDUBS droplets 'just work', but case you are curios here some details.
Meta Data
The same possibilities for Ftp#meta_data exist also for data uploaded via droplets.
System requirements
Internally the droplet uses the program curl that is installed on every OS X computer.
Transport mechanism
Droplets use ftp to transfer data into the INTERDUBS system. This mechanism is similar but not the same than the Ftp gateway of INTERDUBS. See using the droplet gateway for details.
