Moodle

if-modified-since will be probably supported in 2.0 in file.php, pluginfile.php etc, but website copiers definitely will not be and can not be supported, the reason is we are abusing GET requests for database modifications, so in fact we are actively prohibiting use of these tools

Ok, I don't have a deep understanding of the inner workings but I can't quiet understand why me retrieving a file from my course should trigger a database modification and how that might interfere with a proper response to a "if-modified-since" header. The method is still GET.... Maybe moodle records a timestamp when users are retrieving files - so why not record that anyway and send a 304 response.

Why are you "prohibiting" website copiers?

As I said moodle wrongly uses GET requests instead of proper POST requests in some places, so using of web site copiers and preloaders asks for trouble - if you do that with guest account it may work, but once you try that as a real user it is a disaster.

I see, right. Sureley, website copier might have some problem. Especially if used in a wrong way (with default options). But I think I'm not "overdoing" it. I actually just want my scripts locally available without beeing forced to download and save each and every file with the browser. Teachers sometimes put one files per lesson/week and this adds up to a lot of files if you attend 8 courses during 18 weeks - one would defenitley want to automate the downloading - so if there was another solution I really wouldn't mind as well.

BUT: actually I'm not asking for "website copier support" here. Only for propper If-Modified-Since handling. And I still can't see a real reason for rejecting Chris Freyr's 9 lines of code that would enable it. I can't find any database modification in the code path of retrieving a file (file.php -> filelib.php:send_file -> filelib.php:readfile_chunked -> done).

So again, please, why not, it won't do no harm, add:

$gmtlastmodified = gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s', $lastmodified) . ' GMT';
header('Last-Modified: '. $gmtlastmodified);

if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE'])) {
if (strtotime($gmtlastmodified) <= strtotime($_SERVER['HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE'])) { header('HTTP/1.0 304 Not Modified'); header('Cache-control: must-revalidate'); exit (0); }
}

I might actually miss some point as well. Sorry for the noise in that case...

Another $_SERVER['HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE'] handler routine is actually already since long, it seems, doing a very nice job in serving pictures in pix/smartpix.php - so why not in filelib.php as well - where is the difference?

So I'm using this now since quiet a long time without any problems:

httrack --update -s0 -A100000 -%s -%v2 https://moodle.fhnw.ch/user/view.php?id=2593 -* \
+moodle.fhnw.ch/user/view.php?id=2593* \
+moodle.fhnw.ch/mod/resource/* \
+moodle.fhnw.ch/file.php/* \
+.jpg +.gif +*.png \
+moodle.fhnw.ch/course/view.php?id=978 \
....

As a real user! No "desaster" at all. Maybe you'd like to check the httrack homepage and docs once to get convinced that it's quiet sophisticated: www.httrack.com - and NOT just another brute-force website copier. As I said: it's working like a charm, EXCEPT that i have to enable "update hacks" (%s) to make it work with moodle. This makes httrack not rely on the server response to the If-Modified-Since request and cut the connection as soon as it becomes very likely that the server is lying about the file modification time and trying to send us the same file again: after recieving the "Content-Length" header, if the local and remote file sizees are equal, it just drops the socket... ;/ ... which I find a bit unfriendly, but, as moodle just doesn't get it right, the only option.

Still hoping that this will get fixed once

Greets

Patrick

1/ sorry, there is not going to be any support for mass downloading of moodle pages
2/ support $_SERVER['HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE'] will not be added to stable branch
3/ $_SERVER['HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE'] will be probably added into 2.0

Ok, well... although I really can't figure out, what you like so much about this BUG, I'm glad to learn that my real issue of liking to automate the download of moodle pages and resources for local (mobile/offline) use is, as it seems, already being professionally worked on by the "Offline Moodle" project. See a very nice description here: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=71136 Here is their project page: http://hawk.aos.ecu.edu/moodle2/course/view.php?id=22 But it looks like the Project has some way to go stil...

There is another project proposed for GSOC which involves Goodle Gears

Um, so is HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE implemented in Moodle 2.0 now?

not yet

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