Is there a way I can search for all the hosted files of all the child account users without having to have a session token?  I am building a video sharing site and would like shared/hosted files to be easily searchable and viewable by everyone.

Also, can I Host (share) a file on a user's behalf (after reviewing the video for content) and unhost (unshare) the file on their behalf from a master account?

 Most people use a local database for extended searching functionality without having to call into the system.  Usually this works by the external website (your video site) waiting for the user to do an upload and then a callback from our system would be made back to you letting you know the upload has completed.  This could be a signal to review the video.  Once it has been reviewed you could then share the file.  Usually this is done from a call to GetOptimalURLs which will let you generate a URL that will be active for a specific period of time.

Let me know if you would like to discuss this further.

Regards,
      Barry R.

Hi Barry,

Thanks for the fast response.  I was really hoping to be able to push search to your service.  You guys have a pretty well designed tagging and metadata system.  It seems a waste for me to try replicating that and introducing a bottleneck to my service.  Ideally, the user should only go to my external website to register for a child account should they want/need one.  Aside from that and some community features, I would really like the client (WPF and Silverlight 2.0) to communicate almost exclusively with Nirvanix.

How hard would it be for you to enable the search system for hosted files without requiring a user session?  At least for me, the box really would be dead.

 I think you should take a look at the LoginProxy functionality.  This lets you login to our system as another IP Address.  This way you can pass out a session token to an end user allowing them to do the web service calls directly from an external client without needing the authentication information.  Take a look at the API call and let me know if this will work for you.

http://developer.nirvanix.com/sitefiles/1000/API.html#_TocLoginProxy

Regards,
     Barry R.

All of these options seem scary to me.  Giving away session tokens seems scary to me, even if isolated to an IP address, considering everything you can do with them.  If I give people child accounts they have the ability to delete\rename\move the files out from under me.  How can I put a link to a file I can't guarantee is there anymore?  I can't subscribe to the delete event, which would be too late anyway.  To avoid this, I would essentially have to sideload from their account to my "host" account that they don't have access to, which doubles my bandwidth usage.  Or, I have to have my service scan Nirvanix every few minutes and correct discrepancies in my database (broken links).

The other, very silly option, would be to create a new child account for every single file uploaded.  Their upload session would be isolated to the one account and one file and they would lose direct control over the file after that session went away.  Your search system is useless unless I put everything under 1 account, so that option is really broken too.

 

I really, really need the following:

1. The ability to make a child account that is read only (no upload, move, copy, delete, modify or append).
   
2. The ability to move files from one child account to another using a master account.
3. The ability to delete files in child accounts from a master account.
   
4. The ability to search hosted files.

Also, say I wanted only Premium members to get access to certain files, like DRM protected media I sell them.  To let them download one of those files, I would have to give them a session token which they could then use to rename, delete, copy, move, append any file held by that child account using that session token.

 

otherwise:

The ability to make a child account that is read only (no upload, move, copy, delete, modify or append).

 

otherwise:

Also, say I wanted only Premium members to get access to certain files, like DRM protected media I sell them.  To let them download one of those files, I would have to give them a session token which they could then use to rename, delete, copy, move, append any file held by that child account using that session token.

 

Your suggestions are definately understood, to give download access you can use GetOptimalURLs to generate a link that will expire after a period of time and can be locked to a specific IP Address.  The link that is generated is not a general session token and can only be used to download that one single file.

otherwise:

The ability to move files from one child account to another using a master account.

 

This has been requested many times and we are considering it.  I will let you know our decision on this as time progresses but it may not be a quick feature to add.

otherwise:

The ability to delete files in child accounts from a master account.

 

This is available right now, you can use absolute paths as a master account to delete any file within a child account.

//appname/childacctname/folder/file.jpg

 

otherwise:

The ability to search hosted files.

 

This feature has been requested previously also, the search system has been the topic of discussion for some time.  We would like to see not only this but to expand the functionality of searching in general.

 Thanks for your suggestions, I am going to discuss with the team your requests and see what priority they can be given.

Regards,
      Barry R.