MidCOM 3 supports now X-Sendfile

Normally serving files directly from PHP can be quite resource consuming. X-Sendfile provides an alterntive way to serve files from PHP script. It's quite simple, you just send one more header line after setting your content type.

Apache's X-Sendfile module then intercepts the header and does it magic. Module also provides caching headers etc to the browser.

Setting things up is simple

1. Download the module from mod_xendfile's page
2. Compile and install it in your apache and do apache restart
3. Add following line to your MidCOM 3's configuration
   - enable_xsendfile: true

Then all attachments should be served via xsendfile. It's a bit faster and on the second load when the browser cache hits in, it's even faster.

Pros:

• Fast and low memory consuption when serving very large attachements
• Allow using ACL's before serving

Cons:

• Not an official apache module. Needs some tweaking.
• File or any file is served without any intervention of Midgard or Midcom. So if you xsendfile directly, be careful!