Handle big Video files

Anvil Q&A
1

Hello Anvil Community,

I am facing a challenge in my current project where I need to upload very large files (multiple gigabytes) from the client to a server using Anvil Uplink, which is set up on my personal computer. Initially, I attempted to handle this by chunking the files into smaller parts and encoding them in base64 before sending them to the server. However, I encountered issues with chunks over 16 MB and I am also concerned about the overhead and potential security risks associated with base64 encoding.

Given these challenges, I am looking for alternative methods to manage the upload of large files directly to an Uplink server, ideally without resorting to chunking or encoding.

Specifically, I am seeking answers to the following questions:

  1. Is there a known limitation on the payload size for Anvil server calls, especially when using Uplink, that I should be aware of?
  2. Are there any recommended strategies or tools within Anvil for handling direct uploads of large files to an Uplink server?
  3. Could there be an entirely different approach or a modification to the traditional file upload method that might help avoid these issues?

I am particularly interested in solutions that can manage these large file transfers efficiently and securely, without the complexities of breaking files into parts or encoding them.

Any insights, advice, or pointers towards documentation or similar use cases would be immensely helpful. I appreciate your support and look forward to your suggestions!

Thank you!

2

Hi @mzp,

The payload limit is for the JSON data, not Media. However, Media is stored in memory when you send it, so multiple GB isn’t going to work unless you’re on a Business or Dedicated plan with expanded RAM. Also, Media in Data Tables is limited to 1GB (that’s a Postgres binary storage limit). With files that size, I’d recommend storing the data in a specialised storage service such as S3, rather than passing all the data through your Server Modules. You can upload directly from the browser into S3. We have a how-to guide in our docs that tells you exactly how to do that:

I hope that helps!