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Downloaded files are empty and no download link in the confirmation

Hello, my customer is suddenly having issues with her digital downloads in marketpress not working anymore.

There’s no download link in the confirmation email and when the customer logs in to their account to download the files it’s downloading blank text files instead of directing them to the dropbox link where the file is located.

Please help.

Wed, 8 Nov 2017 17:49:55
  • Predrag Dubajic
    • Support

    Hi Stacey,

    Can you tell me if this product is the only one having this issue:

    “Motherhood editing video tutorial with free photoshop action pack”

    I’m asking this because I see that this product is not linking to a file but rather to a Dropbox folder.

    What MarketPress does with external files is that it downloads it temporary to your site and then serves the download link to customers.

    However in this case it seems like it’s unable to create that temp file because it’s not a file, it’s a folder.

    Can you check your other products, that are not using folder as location and see if those are working fine?

    One more thing with your dropbox folder for this product, the files in there are over 1GB in size and since it needs to create temp file on your server there could be an issue with not enough space on your server or that it’s unable to handle such large files.

    Also, I was able to replicate the issue with link missing in email and have create a bug report for our developers.

    Best regards,

    Predrag

  • Stacey
    • Site Builder, Child of Zeus

    Hello,

    It is the two digital products that are listed as private listings, that are having the problem. Both of which are linked to dropbox.

    So are you suggesting if it links directly to the video itself rather than the folder it should work?

    Stacey

  • Stacey
    • Site Builder, Child of Zeus

    I have raised this with the customer and she has said it’s not possible to directly link to the one video as the two files are required. I have suggested a zip file – however, it has been working fine using the current method for months – why has it suddenly changed?

  • Stacey
    • Site Builder, Child of Zeus

    Hi, my customer has tried it with a ZIP file too, and is very confused as to why it’s suddenly stopped working. With the zip file she’s having the same issue as described with the link taking her to the error page.

  • Predrag Dubajic
    • Support

    Hi Stacey,

    Can you test your other product but before purchasing it remove the ?dl=0 part from the dropbox link?

    I did a test on my end with an example file being pulled from Dropbox and it worked fine there.

    As for the folder download, did this worked previously with the exact same folder or there were different files in there?

    Have you checked your available space on your server and made sure that there’s enough space in order to create temp file?

    Best regards,

    Predag

  • Stacey
    • Site Builder, Child of Zeus

    Hi Predag, it was exactly the same folder – nothing was changed it just stopped working suddenly. Have passed your feedback on to my customer. Regarding server space, the hosts have said it’s an elastic server so doesn’t have any restrictions?

  • Predrag Dubajic
    • Support

    Hi Stacey,

    When using your download link in my test site I can see the warnings but it seems to me that this is related to the huge files as the warning is saying that the server timed out, so the errors are actually different then the ones you are seeing.

    Can you tell me if there were any changes on your site around the time this has started happening, any additional plugins installed or some major updates performed?

    I see in chat that you mentioned the download link goes to this page domain.com/store/products/motherhood-editing-video-tutorial-with-free-photoshop-action-pack/?orderid=8b43b9c32ddb instead of the dropbox page.

    This is actually how it’s supposed to work since that’s the page where download is created and once the download file is created on your site the download should start.

    How did this work for you previously, are you saying that instead of downloading the files it took you to dropbox page instead?

    I have also pinged our devs about this thread so they can check this out as well.

    Best regards,

    Predrag

  • Lindeni Mahlalela
    • Recruit

    Hello Stacey

    I hope you are doing great today, thank you for your patience while we were working on this issue.

    I have done some tests using the download link you shared and I was not able to get it to download the folder.

    From what I know, MarketPress requires the download link to be a direct download to a specific file, in the case of the shared link it could be a link to the individual files in the shared folder. Also the link provided by Dropbox for the folder is not a direct download link but a landing page where the user can be able to choose each file from the folder and download or download the entire folder from Dropbox.

    I have tested with one of the video files in the folder and I was able to get it to work with a direct download link from Dropbox, to get it to achieve this you have to open the folder and inside it open each file and get the “Direct download” link and set it in the “File Url” in the product editor in WordPress Admin. I have tried this with one of the videos in the folder and it worked on my test site. I suggest you / your client tries this with a zip file instead of a folder.

    I have also found the following from the dropbox user forums:

    You cannot download over 1gb of data via the browser. You have to download the Dropbox “application”.

    I found that on this thread: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Error-messages/Error-downloading-folder-through-web-client/td-p/163205

    I tried to test if that is true by creating a small folder on my Dropbox account with five photos and set the direct link to download the folder in the file url in my product page. I have then tested this and found that this downloads a file that is the slug of the product, I have reviewed this file with a code editor and found that this is the HTML code of the landing page where one would normally download the file on Dropbox.

    This behavior is the same with your download link and my download link, but since my download link was for a folder that contains only five small size photos then I can conclude that the size of the folder is not the issue, maybe Dropbox has introduced some limits or restrictions we are not aware of.

    From all the tests I have performed, MarketPress works fine it only needs a direct link to the file, but unfortunately Dropbox redirects to a landing page for the folders but allows direct download for the files.

    I hope this helps. Please let us know if you have any further questions or feedback for us and we will be happy to help in anyway possible.

    Have a nice day.

    Mahlamusa