File upload progress bar with apache's progress upload module

Problem -

Build a simple file upload progress bar for a web app (ruby on rails app running on apache with pushion passenger).

Implementation -

The file upload progress bar can be implemented using the Upload progress module for apache https://github.com/drogus/apache-upload-progress-module.

Installation & Configuration -

1) Download the source code

    wget https://github.com/drogus/apache-upload-progress-module.git

Alternate source: wget --no-check-certificate

    http://github.com/drogus/apache-upload-progress-module/tarball/master

2) Compile the source code and install the module in apache

    cd apache-upload-progress-module

    sudo apxs2 -c -i -a mod_upload_progress.c

Note - Please note that to compile the module, you will need threaded development library of apache2

3) Modify apache configuration

a) In apache conf, load the file upload module

    LoadModule upload_progress_module libexec/apache2/mod_upload_progress.so

b) In the VirtualHost configuration of the application add

    
        <Location />
          # enable tracking uploads in /
          TrackUploads On
        </Location>
    
        <Location /progress>
          # enable upload progress reports in /progress
          ReportUploads On
        </Location>

4) Restart the apache server.

Code changes in the app -

In the file upload form action url, append X-ProgressID=<GUID>. (make sure that this is the last key-value in the query string of the form action url) Once the file upload has started, fire Ajax request to /progress?X-Progress-ID=<GUID> to get the status of the upload.
The status would be in a Json format. Ex -

{ "state" : "uploading", "received" : 35587, "size" : 716595, "speed" : 35587, "started_at": 1296568823, "uuid" : "12345678" }

Fields -

state - indicates the current status of the upload. Once the upload is complete, the state would be ‘done’
received - indicates the number of bytes received by the server.
size - total size of the file in bytes
started_at - upload start time. (Epoch format)
uuid - The GUID supplied as part of the query string key (X-Progress-ID)

Reference -

README of apache-upload-progress-module