Filedrawers

filedrawers screenshot

Filedrawers is a web-based file manager which talks to an AFS filesystem back-end with mod_waklog. It was developed by the University of Michigan, and is available for download under an open source license.

Building Filedrawers

To implement the functionality in filedrawers, it was written with object-oriented php, smarty, and javascript for DOM-scripting, and a touch of C (for file uploads). Task-oriented user testing allowed for user interface refinements.

Functionality

Filedrawers is a file manager, which means that while using a web browser, a user can:

  • list the contents of their directories
  • navigate to other directories
  • download files
  • create, rename, move, or delete files or directories
  • upload files
    • supports multiple files at once
    • animated ProgresS bar
  • view files with supported mime types
    • plain text, html, source code (c, php, js, css, etc.)
    • images: gif, jpg, png
    • audio files such as mp3 and aiff
    • video: mpeg, or quicktime
    • shockwave / flash
    • we have plans to add a text editor

Additional / Advanced Functionality

There is a powerful tool for managing permissions through AFS ACLs.

The webspace creation tool helps users to easily create the necessary directories, sets (or fixes) permissions, and copies over an XHTML compliant file as an example for users to get started.

Allow support features enables users to give administrative access of their personal space to departmental support staff.

Production Services

Many schools and colleges have communicated AbOUT bringing up a development instance of filedrawers at their institution. It is currently deployed at the University of Michigan as mfile, and Duke as webfiles

Presentations

On June 15, 2006 a presentation was made at the OpenAFS Best Practices Workshop, titled: Accessing AFS through the Web with Waklog. This explored how one could build upon a webserver infrastructure using Apache HTTP Server, Cosign, and mod_waklog to deliver file access to the web. Filedrawers was the featured solution.