You asked, we delivered!

Now available for developers is a new feature “Import from URL”. This feature was requested by our users in January, and we are happy to say… we listened.

This new feature will allow developers to enter a URL that points directly to a file download and import it directly into the AFH site. Once it’s imported, it is handled just like any other file so it’s spread around to all of our mirrors (currently NINE mirrors!), backed up, and your users are ready to download immediately. The reason for this request is to help developers with, shall we say, less than stellar bandwidth so they don’t have to upload huge files to multiple sites.

While this new feature is primarily aimed at developers, users will also benefit since those devs will be able to get their files out just a little bit faster now. Developers, we’d LOVE to hear your feedback on this new feature.

Currently, this upgrade for developers requires a little manual intervention on our part so if you’d like to use this feature, contact us and be a little patient while we get you set up.

Don’t forget to vote for feature suggestions! We can’t guarantee that we will definitely do your suggestion next, but it does put a very high priority for us. We try to balance features that make life easier/better for developers, users, (and ourselves!). Make sense?

Instructions:

• Go to the device > folder you want to import the file into
• In the sidebar (on mobile, scroll down to see it) click on the “Import from URL” button which opens a dialog box
• Enter in the FULL URL that links directly to the file download and click the “Import” button
• The dialog box will update with status and expected filesize. You will see periodic updates to percentage complete
• When the file has imported, click the “Close” button to close the window and refresh the page to see your files

Notes:

• Developers -> make sure you check your MD5 for the imported file
• This will only work on DIRECT links to the file. If you go to the URL and get a landing page (please wait, etc) this won’t work
• If it takes too long (1 or 2 below is slow) the import will fail (you should see an error message). You can try again later or import using our other methods (browser upload, ftp import)
• The speed of the import depends on: 1. the speed of the site importing FROM
• the current load on AFH’s servers
• your speed doesn’t matter

We’d love your feedback on new features so go vote, or comment down below!