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Automating your Uploads and Downloads
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Curl is a program that will help you to automate your uploads and downloads. It's free, which makes it even better. It is available for virtually any modern computer system.

If you're on a UNIX system, it may already be installed. If not, you can always go here to get a copy:

http://curl.haxx.se/

First, you'll need to find out what URLs we have assigned to you for uploading and downloading.

The upload URL for a given network will look something like:

http://www.citytools.net/upload/$apr1$1s8bhd73$QCEIvzlzuTze9fGa3raNv./upload.html

The download URL for a given network will look something like:

download: http://www.citytools.net/download/$apr1$1s8bhd73$QCEIvzlzuTze9fGa3raNv./download158.zip

These examples are for demonstration and won't work for you -- you should cut and paste an actual upload and download URL from the My Nets page.

If you haven't already logged in, you'll be asked to do so. Once you've logged in, just go to the My Nets page to see a list of your upload and download URLs. There will be one each for each network that you're a member of.

Using Curl

Curl makes automating uploads and downloads easy.

You can do this by hand, just to test it out, and automate it later using whatever process your operating system supports (for instance, using cron under Unix).

First, make sure that your source data is in a format that we support (currently XML, CSV, or Morris classified). If you prefer, you can compress your data using zip or gzip, and you can even tar several files together so as to minimize upload time.

The curl statement for uploading looks like this:

curl -F 'file=@FILENAME' 'URL' -o RESULTS.txt

where FILENAME should be replaced with the local filename of your source data, and URL should be the upload URL for the network you want to send that data to. RESULTS.txt will contain some information about your upload, but you can ignore it if you'd like.

Downloads are even simpler:

curl 'URL' -o FILENAME.zip

where URL is replaced with the download URL for the network that you're downloading from, and FILENAME.zip should be replaced with whatever filename you'd like to have your downloads saved as.

Downloads are saved as zip files in order to minimize network time, and will uncompress into individual files in csv, rss, xml, and morris classified format. That way you can use whichever format is most convenient for your imports.

If there are no pending downloads for the networks involved, an empy file named "nofiles.txt" will be the only content in the zipfile and can be safely ignored.

tips!

click on an item below for more info

The 15-minute sign-up howto

The full version of the 15-minute setup howto is here

"fast track" version of the 15-minute howto (experienced users)

Here you go!
fast track howto

Upload and download Howto

There is a detailed and fast track version.
The detailed version is here

The fast track version is here

How do I resign from a network?

There is a howto that discusses how to resign from a network

Control incoming feeds in a network

There is a Howto on managing feeds from other network members

Control HTML in your network feeds

There is a Howto about controlling HTML in your network feeds.

Admin: managing members

There is a Howto that deals with managing member access. It's only relevant if you are an administrator of a network.

Join a private network

Instruction on how to join a private network is available.

Admin: Add/reorder network categories

A howto dealing with adding or reordering network categories is available

Admin: Rename network categories

A howto on changing network category names is available.