NANY 2011 Release: Partial Download

[anandcoral]

NANY 2011 Entry Information

Application Name	Partial Download
Version	1.0.2
Short Description	Downloads first few bytes of a given url.
Supported OSes	Windows with Command Prompt support
Web Page	https://sites.google...ite/partialdownload/
Download Link	Click on "Download" on main web page
System Requirements	WinXp or higher with Command Prompt support
Version History	1.0.2, Console mode for background download
Author	Anand K Gupta

Description
You see I needed an application to "partial download" a file, specially large movie file, from a given url.

Reason: This is a season of wishing each other and sending some thing to smile big or small. My mail group and individual friends send me sometimes movie file, which contains, say a funny situation of a couple on gift purchase. I do smile after watching it. So far so good. Now the problem is, another of my friend sends me the same movie but in different name and he writes only "Enjoy!". This file happens to be 84MB!! Just imagine my face after downloading on paid connection, I find the same movie, albeit in better and bigger resolution, but same.

So I need to download the first few bytes, say 1MB, of the same and check it in GOM Player. If I have watched it earlier or if it is not of my liking, I will not download it.

I searched and could not find any file down-loader which I can tell to download just 1MB or so of the file. If I cancel a download in middle, the file gets deleted. Forget about using it as background job.

Solution: I made "Partial Download" console application. This is a console application and so requires CMD (Command Prompt) support to run.

Features
Downloads first few bytes of given url. Best for partially downloading a huge movie file and checking it for it worthiness to download full.

Planned Features
Depends on feedback

Usage
Installation
Unzip zip file in a folder of your choice and run the exe in a console window (command prompt).

Using the Application
Syntax:
"partial download" url [bytes_to_download]
where bytes_to_download defaults to 1.5 MB

Example:
"partial download" http://filehost.com/abcd.flv
"partial download" http://filehost.com/abcd.flv 1500000


Uninstallation
Delete the folder you unzipped the exe in.

Known Issues
Do not have any window/GUI interface

[kyrathaba]

Hey, you know that really is a good idea!  I wish I'd had something like that a couple of years ago, when I was downloading LOTS of movies.

[anandcoral]

There are still goods movies left to download 

Please use latest version 1.1.1 from the web site, as earlier version had bug in not downloading the file at all. My apologies if anyone tried to use the earlier version. Now it displays full information and shows download progress too, so that user can know, it is working.

Regards,

Anand

[anandcoral]

Updated to 1.2.0

- Changed: Now shows progress '#' after multiple of 10KB download.
- New: Now shows total bytes downloaded, after completion.

Regards,

Anand

[mouser]

Congrats, Partial Download just got a write up at ghacks 

http://www.ghacks.ne...load-part-of-a-file/

[Cyeb]

Haven't you heard of wget? 

[KynloStephen66515]

GNU Wget has many features to make retrieving large files or mirroring entire web or FTP sites easy, including:

• Can resume aborted downloads, using REST and RANGE
  
• Can use filename wild cards and recursively mirror directories
  
• NLS-based message files for many different languages
  
• Optionally converts absolute links in downloaded documents to relative, so that downloaded documents may link to each other locally
  
• Runs on most UNIX-like operating systems as well as Microsoft Windows
  
• Supports HTTP proxies
  
• Supports HTTP cookies
  
• Supports persistent HTTP connections
  
• Unattended / background operation
  
• Uses local file timestamps to determine whether documents need to be re-downloaded when mirroring
  
• GNU Wget is distributed under the GNU General Public License.

@Cyeb: No specifics on "Partial Downloading" and not dedicated to that exact thing.

@anandcoral: Great tool, very very usefull indeed.  Ill be grabbing a copy of this for when I have to use my backup Mobile Broadband connection which is heavily limited and costs a lot to keep buying more usage.

I wonder if you could add "Partial Youtube Video Download" support, for the same reasons you made this.  Sometimes you get sent multiple links for the same thing, which has 8427289 different names on youtube, and, you cannot control how much it buffers, which, the more it buffers, the more usage I get charged for haha.  No problem if you cannot, it was worth asking

[Cyeb]

My mistake...I meant to say cURL instead of wget.

[Select]

-r/--range <range>

(HTTP/FTP/SFTP/FILE) Retrieve a byte range (i.e a partial document) from a HTTP/1.1, FTP or SFTP server or a local FILE. Ranges can be specified in a number of ways.

http://curl.haxx.se/docs/manpage.html

[KynloStephen66515]

Either way, hes made this himself, therefor, it works the exact way he want it to, and theres never any harm in having several peices of software to do the same thing eh 

[Cyeb]

Yeah, I'll agree, it's pretty nice nonetheless.

[anandcoral]

Thanks mouser for the gHacks link and thank you all for the encouragement. I feel honored. 

@Cyeb, yes I have mentioned about wget on the web site, as similar but not with the partial option. I checked the curl web site but it also do not have this intentional partial download option. Please correct me if I am wrong. I did googled before developing "partial download" application, but could not find one.

@Stephen66515 thanks for feedback. I will try to implement youtube option.

I have the gui, download from file (having urls listed on separate lines) etc. option on drawing board, but I want NANY 2011 to complete first.

Anand

[kyrathaba]

Congrats on the gHack recognition, Anand!

[Cyeb]

@Cyeb, yes I have mentioned about wget on the web site, as similar but not with the partial option. I checked the curl web site but it also do not have this intentional partial download option. Please correct me if I am wrong. I did googled before developing "partial download" application, but could not find one.

-anandcoral (January 03, 2011, 11:18 AM)

Well.. Actually cURL does include a partial download, as stated in my comment up there.  I downloaded cURL from here:

[Select]

http://curl.haxx.se/download.html

And tried both Partial Download and cURL on this image here:

[Select]

https://www.donationcoder.com/cssimages/topbanner_website.png

Here's an example on getting 1500 bytes for both programs:

[Select]

curl https://www.donationcoder.com/cssimages/topbanner_website.png -r 0-1500 > topbanner_website.png

"partial download" https://www.donationcoder.com/cssimages/topbanner_website.png 1500

Anandcoral, both programs have their own benefits, of course.  Partial Download has much easier syntax to understand as well as (hopefully in the future ) the possibility of a partial Youtube video download.  cURL provides more flexibility, but is a bit harder to understand.

I hope I don't offend you by posting here, but you know.  The facts are the facts, and cURL did get there 12 years before you did.    But like I said, your software may open up the possibility for partial Youtube downloads, which cURL can not do, so it wasn't all for nothing!  Keep up the good work!

[anandcoral]

Thanks kyrathaba.

Cyeb, yes, cURL can download partial in various range. Looks like "partial download" was destiny that Google did not show me the page, else I may not have made it.

"partial download" uses different logic so hopefully will work on all type of http connection, old or new, and I will try to add features missing but wanted in it, like Youtube.

No, I did not get offended, but was clarifying that I did not found in my search.

Praise and criticism are like day and night in programming life, and similarly both are needed for a healthy application. I just need to light some candles (add useful features) to reduce the darkness. If we had not critisised Vista, we had not got Win7 so soon. So keep posting the feedback 

Regards,

Anand

[anandcoral]

Can I put the link of this "Donationcoder" page on the PD web page ?

If yes, what image I can use of "Donationcoder" ? Also I request to put link of the main "donationcoder.com"

if no, well, thanks.

Anand

[mouser]

by all means, link to donationcoder wherever you want however you want.

Renegade was actually nice enough to update Hamradio's NANY badge graphic if you want to use that, it's here:

direct link: https://www.donation...1/nany2011ribbon.png
(it's from this thread).

there is also this page:
https://www.donation...om/About/linkimages/

[anandcoral]

Thanks Mouser, will make required changes in the website and add the image.

One small request to all, if possible, please try to add the required feature suggestion in the feedback form, at the Feedback page of the website ( direct link https://sites.google...wnload/home/feedback ). This will help me to gather all points at one place and also to make the FAQ list.

Regards,

Anand