file

Hello all. My apologies if this question belongs in a more entry-level group (let me know if you recommend one.)

The question: The site I'm building will need to have a strong ability to present files for download by users. The out-of-the-box drupal has the Uploads module, which allows us to place files onto the site. However, there is no functionality for the uploader to include metadata for the file like name, author, date, keywords, etc.

-- What is the most established/respected/good module that will allow uploads to have metadata?

I got frustrated with files uploaded via the Upload module being assigned seemingly random MIME types, depending on the client that originally uploaded the file. So I made a little utility module -- http://drupal.org/project/filemime -- that may be useful for anyone using the Upload module. It rewrites the MIME type for each file upload based on a server-side mime.types file and/or custom settings.

It hasn't been heavily tested yet so please file an issue if you find any..

With the current, stable ecommerce version, I'm putting together a site where free (price $0) file products can be downloaded without purchase. I've made it so that free file products are uploaded into an unprotected directory, and I've modified ec_file_may_download in file.module to allow these files to be downloaded with whatever permissions. This works perfectly for authenticated users, they can download these files easily, however anonymous users get redirected to a 404.

So the Summer of Code is started and getting private and public files working is now on the top of the list of my priorities. The first issue to solve, should this go in Drupal 5 or Drupal 6. Because of the nature of the fixes Drupal 6 would make sense but may contain too many problems to work around (bugs, wildly changing code). What has really left it up in the air is this patch which would associate files with users rather than nodes. So the first step is to figure that out.

After reading Hariska2@drupal.org's comment about creating a rudimentary DMS module, I was thinking about wanting just such a thing. (It is part of the reason for establishing this group.)

However, much of the functionality already exists. I want to make sure that if I aid in the creation of a new module for document management that that module doesn't totally overlap existing functionality to much. However, there are some pretty significant improvements that I think could be made. I will commence with suggesting the things that already exist and then consider what is missing.

I'm cross posting an issue here to let you guys know of this way:

Private and Public File Access

Banner.module isn't really guilty here. There are a lot more modules that do not work with private file access.