[web-devel] Generating, serving, and deleting temporary files with Wai/Yesod

[Matt Brown]

Thanks for the feedback.  I reverted my last commit and pushed a
rewrite, trying to follow your advice.  Seems much cleaner now; what
do you think?

http://github.com/softmechanics/wai/commit/b37747ab9e2fd031512661ea57dc52c960edb902

-matt

On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 10:54 AM, Michael Snoyman <michael at snoyman.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 8:21 PM, Matt Brown <matt at softmechanics.net> wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I've been experimenting with generating graphs from log files using
>> timeplot and serving them with yesod.  Each generated graph is only
>> served once, so I need a way to clean them up.  A cron job would be
>> ok, but it's one more thing I'd have to remember to do, and I'm lazy.
>>
>> Instead, I'd like to pass a "clean up action" to the enumerator
>> sending the file, to be performed after EOF is reached.  For most
>> files, this would just close the handle.  For temp files, it would
>> also delete the file.  Here's the gist of it:
>> http://gist.github.com/640902
>>
>> The first revision defines a monolithic fromTempFile :: FilePath ->
>> Enumerator.  The second imports a factored version from
>> Network.Wai.Handler (see my wai commit:
>> http://github.com/softmechanics/wai/commit/2cb5ea47ca458f4b91a73e01a1dd0a29e84e001e).
>> Not sure wai is the place for it.  Perhaps wai-extra would be a better?
>>
>> Does this seem like a good approach?
>
> This does seem like the right approach. Just as fair warning: using an
> enumerator for serving files loses out on the possible optimization of
> a sendfile system call. Another possibility may be to keep a pool of
> file names to use as temporary files and keep rotating their usage.
> But I *do* think your approach is the correct one.
>
> Regarding the API changes to wai: they seem reasonable, and I'd
> probably accept them. Some concerns about the implementation:
>
> * Instead of fromHandle' and fromFile', perhaps fromHandleFinally and
> fromFileFinally?
> * In fromFile', why are you calling hClose? withBinaryFile
> automatically closes the file handle. Are you worried about the
> temporary file getting deleted while the file handle is still open?
> * In fromHandle', onEOF won't get called if the iteratee returns Left.
> Is this intended behavior?
> * Your code won't work in the presence of exceptions. Ideally the body
> of fromHandle' would be wrapped with a call to finally. This point is
> related to the previous one.
>
> Michael
>