Method and apparatus for peer-to-peer file authoring

• US 10,565,167 B2
• Filed: 06/20/2014
• Issued: 02/18/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 06/21/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Arroware Industries, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Arroware Industries, Inc.
• Inventors: Kinsman, Philip James, Medcalf, Harvey Christopher Howard, Ko, Ho Fai, Kinsman, Adam Bruce
• Primary Examiner(s): Ellis, Matthew J
• Application Number:
  US14/310,028
• Publication Number:
  US 20140379641A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,069 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/178 Techniques for file synchronisation in file systems

Abstract

Co-authoring of a digital content file using content contributed by peer devices in a peer-to-peer communications network is described. A local copy of the digital content file is stored in each of plural peer communications devices disposed in a multi-node communications network. The contents of the local copies of the digital content file stored in at least two peer communications devices are compared and in an event the local copies of the digital content file stored in a peer communications device is missing content that is contained in the other compared peer communications devices, the missing content is merged into the local copy of the digital content file stored in the peer communications device.

Claims

1. A computerized method for co-authoring a digital content file in a multi-node peer-to-peer communications system, the multi-node peer-to-peer communications system including a server that connects two or more peer communications nodes via a communications network, each peer communications node representing a peer communications device, the method comprising:

storing a local copy of the digital content file in a plurality of the peer communications devices disposed in the multi-node communications system;

comparing, by a first one of the peer communications devices, authorship actions contained in the local copy of the digital content file stored in the first peer communications device to authorship actions contained in a local copy of the digital content file previously stored in a second one of the peer communications devices; and

responsive to a result of the comparison being that the local copy of the digital content file stored in the first peer communications device has different authorship actions than those contained in the local copy of the digital content file stored in the second peer communications device, merging the authorship actions of the local copy in the first peer communications device with the authorship actions of the local copy in the second peer communications device, such that the local copies contain all of each other'"'"'s authorship actions, including actions that result in conflicting representations of the digital content;

wherein the server does not maintain a master copy of the digital content file.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein storing the local copy of the digital content file includes creating the digital content file by an originating peer communications device.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein creating the digital content file includes obtaining a file identifier for uniquely identifying the digital content file within the multi-node communications system and propagating the file identifier to other peer communications devices disposed in the multi-node communications system.

4. The method of claim 3 further including identifying each of the local copies of the digital content file using the file identifier.

5. The method of claim 3 farther including obtaining the file identifier from a connection manager that monitors connectivity of the plurality of communications peer devices to the multi-node communications system.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein the connection manager is included in the server.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the comparing includes dividing the authorship actions of the local copies into a number of portions, comparing the portions, and continuing to divide the portions into smaller portions and comparing the portions until an authorship action contained in one of the local copies and not contained in another of the local copies is identified.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the comparing is performed in response to a trigger signal generated by at least one of the peer communications devices.

9. The method of claim 8 further including generating the trigger signal by the first peer communications device at least one of accessing and opening a local copy of the digital content file.

19. The method of claim 1, wherein each of the local copies includes a respective log of authorship actions, and the peer communications devices are configured for outputting respective representations of the digital content file by executing at least a subset of the logged authorship actions.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the logged authorship actions are stored as a plurality of identifiers sortable so that a first of the sorted identifiers corresponds to a first action number of an identifier range and last of the sorted identifiers corresponds to a final action number of the identifier range, with all of the other sorted identifiers corresponding to action numbers within the range, and the comparing includes iteratively comparing consistencies between respective portions of the range until an action number of the range of the second communications device that is missing from the range of the first communications device is identified.

21. The method of claim 2, wherein the originating peer communications device can limit the other peer communications devices to read-only access of the digital content file created by the originating peer communications device.

22. The method of claim 19, wherein the authorship actions are stored in directed acyclic graphs, each graph representing the contents of a respective local copy.

23. The method of claim 19, wherein the authorship actions identify authors to whom the authorship actions are attributed.

24. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

resolving the conflicting representations by making a decision based on a policy or based on user intervention; and

adding a new action to each local copy, the new action representing the decision that resolved the conflicting representations.

25. The method of claim 24, further comprising applying of the authorship actions to the digital content and presenting the resulting digital content file to a user.

10. A computer program product, tangibly embodied in a non-transitory computer readable storage medium, comprising instructions being operable to cause a data processing system to:

store a local copy of the digital content file in a plurality of peer communications devices disposed in a multi-node peer-to-peer communications system, the multi-node peer-to-peer communications system including a server that connects two or more peer communications nodes via a communications network, each peer communications node representing a peer communications device;

compare, by a first one of the peer communications devices, authorship actions contained in the local copy of the digital content file stored in the first peer communications device to authorship actions contained in a local copy of the digital content file previously stored in a second one of the peer communications devices; and

responsive to a result of the comparison being that the local copy of the digital content file stored in the first peer communications device has different authorship actions than those contained in the local copy of the digital content file stored in the second peer communications device, merge the authorship actions of the local copy of the digital content file stored in the first peer communications device with the authorship actions of the local copy in the second peer communications device, such that the local copies contain all of each other'"'"'s authorship actions, including actions that result in conflicting representations of the digital content file;

wherein there is no master copy of the digital content file maintained in a central server.

11. The computer program product of claim 10 further comprising instructions being operable to cause the data processing system to store a local copy of the digital content file as a function of creating the digital content file in an originating peer communications device.

12. The computer program product of claim 11 further comprising instructions being operable to cause the data processing system to create the digital content file by obtaining a file identifier for uniquely identify Mg the digital content file within the multi-node communications system and propagating the file identifier to other peer communications devices disposed in the multi-node communications system.

13. The computer program product of claim 12 further comprising instructions being operable to cause the data processing system to identify each of the local copies of the digital content file using the file identifier.

14. The computer program product of claim 12 further comprising instructions being operable to cause the data processing system to obtain the file identifier from a connection manager that monitors connectivity of the plurality of communications peer devices to the multi-node communications system.

15. The computer program product of claim 14 wherein the connection manager is included in the server.

16. The computer program product of claim 10 wherein the comparing includes dividing the authorship actions of the local copies into a number of portions, comparing the portions, and continuing to divide the portions into smaller portions and comparing the portions until an authorship action contained in one of the local copies and not contained in another of the local copies is identified.

17. The computer program product of claim 10 wherein the comparing is performed in response to a trigger signal generated by at least one of the peer communications devices.

18. The computer program product of claim 10 wherein the data processing further comprising instructions being operable to cause the first peer communications device to generate the trigger signal by at least one of accessing and opening a local copy of the digital content file.

26. The computer program product of claim 10, further comprising instructions being operable to cause a data processing system to:

resolve the conflicting representations by making a decision based on a policy or based on user intervention; and

add a new action to each local copy, the new action representing the decision that resolved the conflicting representations.

27. The computer program product, of claim 26, further comprising instructions being operable to cause a data processing system to apply the authorship actions to the digital content and present the resulting digital content file to a user.