downloads: redirect or streaming?

ZC 1.3.9a

What's the difference between download by "redirect" and download by "streaming"? And will streaming help the problem we've been having with customers getting corrupt PDF files?

Many customers tell us they'll get part of a PDF file and then their browser crashes.

John

Entering that same question in the search box of the Tutorials/FAQs section brings up this article:
https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=292

Thank you -- that answered my question.

John

OK, I read the tutorial and it makes sense.

We've been having trouble with downloaded pdfs being very slow and becoming corrupted, so I tried setting the "download by redirect" to false. Now all I get is a 4KB file with the correct name, but obviously, no data in it.

Do I need to change any other settings to turn off the redirect?

I've tried this with streaming on and off, same problem.

No, there's just the one switch to turn off the redirect. And with both redirect and streaming off, as per the tutorial, the files are served directly from the /download/ folder. So, ALL problems after that stage are related to something amuck on your server, not Zen Cart.

When did these problems suddenly start happening?
What patterns exist amongst those complaining?

I'm guessing the problem has been there from the beginning, but only now a problem because of increased traffic (and corresponding complaints from customers).

Not all downloads fail, but there doesn't seem to be any commonality, except that IE seems to have the most problems.

By the way -- regardless of how the Redirect switch is set, the link generated by the cart looks like this:

http://quinceandco.com/store/index.php?main_page=download&order=13620&id=10989

Is this correct?

Here's another bit of oddness I notice around this: On the success page, the link to the download indicates that the link never expires (it says "Unlimited" in that field). But under the configuration > attribute settings, downloads are set to 7 days.

What does that discrepancy indicate?

jgold723:

Here's another bit of oddness I notice around this: On the success page, the link to the download indicates that the link never expires (it says "Unlimited" in that field). But under the configuration > attribute settings, downloads are set to 7 days.

What does that discrepancy indicate?
Admin->Configuration->Attribute Settings -- these are the defaults that will be pre-filled when you add an attribute to a product. You can then override those on the actual attribute-settings screen when assigning filenames and attribute option names/values, etc.
So, if it's saying "unlimited", that suggests that you manually set the value for that attribute to be unlimited, by changing the default that was originally put there.

Ah -- thank you.