Virtual file system for hosted network sites

• US 9,734,160 B1
• Filed: 01/11/2012
• Issued: 08/15/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 01/11/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Sanghvi, Viraj, Sadhana, Vishnu, Huntwork, Andrew S., Thakare, Prashant J., Garg, Pravi, Shekhar, Shashank, Raju, Gurinder, Boynes, Jeremy
• Primary Examiner(s): Gorney, Boris
• Assistant Examiner(s): Tran, Bao
• Application Number:
  US13/348,081
• Time in Patent Office: 2,043 Days
• Field of Search: 707695
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/188 Virtual file systems

Abstract

Disclosed are various embodiments relating to virtual file systems for customers having network sites hosted by a hosting provider. A file system with multiple files of a customer is maintained for a hosting provider. Customer access to a virtualized version of the file system is facilitated. The virtualized version of the file system includes a virtual file that is dynamically generated based at least in part on one of the files in response to an access of the virtual file by the customer. The file system excludes the virtual file. A modification to the virtual file by the customer is obtained. The file in the file system is updated based at least in part on the modification to the virtual file.

Claims

1. A non-transitory computer-readable medium embodying at least one program executable in at least one server computing device that when executed causes the at least one server computing device to at least:

maintain a file system of the at least one server computing device for a hosting provider, the file system including a plurality of files associated with a user of the hosting provider;

facilitate access by a client computing device of the user to a virtualized version of the file system of the at least one server computing device by way of a web-based distributed authoring and versioning (WebDAV) protocol, the virtualized version of the file system including a virtual file, content of the virtual file being dynamically generated to include at least portions of multiple actual files of the file system;

determine whether a request for a file in the virtualized version of the file system from the client computing device of the user corresponds to the virtual file;

determine whether a plurality of versions of the file exist in the virtualized version of the file system in response to a first determination that the request for the file does not correspond to the virtual file;

identify at least one of the plurality of versions of the file in response to a second determination that the plurality of versions of the file exist;

provide the at least one of the plurality of versions of the file to the client computing device of the user;

generate the virtual file in response to a third determination that the request for the file corresponds to the virtual file by transforming one of the multiple actual files embodied in a first format to a second format, wherein the virtual file is embodied in the second format and the content of the virtual file combines the portions of the multiple actual files in response to an access to the virtual file by the client computing device of the user;

provide the generated virtual file to the client computing device of the user;

obtain a modification to the generated virtual file from the client computing device of the user;

determine that the modification complies with a file validation rule; and

merge the modification into at least one of the multiple actual files in response to a fourth determination that the modification complies with the file validation rule.

2. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein a first portion of the virtual file is designated read-only for the user and a second portion of the virtual file is designated writeable for the user, and causing the at least one server computing device to merge the modification further comprises causing the at least one server computing device to verify that the first portion of the virtual file is unmodified by the modification.

3. A system, comprising:

at least one server computing device; and

at least one application executable in the at least one server computing device, the at least one application comprising machine readable instructions that, when executed, cause the at least one server computing device to at least;

maintain a file system of the at least one server computing device for a hosting provider, the file system including a plurality of files associated with a user of the hosting provider;

facilitate access by a client computing device of the user to a virtualized version of the file system of the at least one server computing device, the virtualized version of the file system including a virtual file, content of the virtual file being dynamically generated to include at least portions of multiple actual files of the file system, wherein the virtual file is generated at least in part by transforming at least one of the multiple actual files embodied in a first format to a second format and the content of the virtual file combines the portions of the multiple actual files, wherein the virtual file is generated in response to an access of the virtual file by the client computing device of the user, such that the virtual file is expressed in the second format;

obtain a modification to the virtual file from the client computing device of the user;

determine that the modification to the virtual file complies with at least one file validation rule; and

update at least one of the multiple actual files in the first format based at least in part on the modification to the virtual file.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the at least one of the multiple actual files corresponds to a first extensible markup language (XML) document, and the virtual file corresponds to a second XML document.

5. The system of claim 3, wherein the at least one application further comprises machine readable instructions that, when executed, cause the at least one server computing device to at least

generate an error in response to a determination that the modification to the virtual file does not comply with the at least one file validation rule established by the hosting provider.

6. The system of claim 3, wherein one or more of the plurality of files corresponds to network page generation code configured to generate at least one network page for a network site of the user hosted by the hosting provider, and the at least one application further comprises machine readable instructions that, when executed, cause the at least one server computing device to at least:

obtain a request for the at least one network page from the client computing device;

generate the at least one network page based at least in part on the network page generation code in response to the request; and

send the at least one network page to the client computing device.

7. The system of claim 3, wherein the virtualized version of the file system excludes one of the plurality of files.

8. The system of claim 3, wherein the virtualized version of the file system includes one of the plurality of files.

9. The system of claim 3, wherein causing the at least one server computing device to facilitate access to the virtualized version of the file system further comprises:

causing the at least one server computing device to restrict editing by the user of a first portion of one of the plurality of files; and

causing the at least one server computing device to allow editing by the user of a second portion of the one of the plurality of files.

10. The system of claim 3, wherein the virtual file excludes a first portion of one of the multiple actual files, and the virtual file includes a second portion of the one of the multiple actual files.

11. The system of claim 3, wherein the at least one of the multiple actual files is associated with a first filename in the file system, and the virtual file is associated with a second filename in the virtualized version of the file system which differs from the first filename.

12. The system of claim 3, wherein the file system includes a source code file and a compiled version of the source code file, and the virtualized version of the file system includes the source code file and excludes the compiled version of the source code file.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the modification to the virtual file comprises a first modification and the at least one application further causes the at least one server computing device to at least automatically compile the source code file into the compiled version of the source code file in response to a second modification to the source code file by the client computing device of the user.

14. The system of claim 3, wherein causing the at least one server computing device to facilitate access by the client computing device of the user to the virtualized version of the file system further comprises causing the at least one server computing device to facilitate access by way of a web-based distributed authoring and versioning (WebDAV) protocol.

15. The system of claim 3, wherein the virtualized version of the file system includes another virtual file which is dynamically generated based at least in part on a database query result in response to another access of the other virtual file by the client computing device of the user.

16. The system of claim 3, wherein the virtualized version of the file system includes another virtual file which corresponds to a selected one of a plurality of versions of one of the plurality of files which are included in the file system.

17. The system of claim 3, wherein the virtual file is a decrypted version of the at least one of the multiple actual files.

18. The system of claim 3, wherein the at least one application further causes the at least one server computing device to facilitate copying of the virtual file into another virtual file in the virtualized version of the file system.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein causing the at least one server computing device to facilitate copying of the virtual file into another virtual file further comprises causing the at least one server computing device to automatically store metadata associated with the virtual file in association with the other virtual file.

20. A method, comprising:

maintaining, in at least one of one or more server computing devices, a file system for a hosting provider of the at least one of one or more server computing devices, the file system including a plurality of files associated with a user of the hosting provider;

facilitating access by a client computing device of the user, in the at least one of the one or more server computing devices, to a virtualized version of the file system of the at least one of one or more server computing devices including some of the plurality of files and excluding at least one of the plurality of files stored on the at least one of one or more server computing devices;

obtaining, in the at least one of the one or more server computing devices, a request by the client computing device of the user to access a file in the virtualized version of the file system;

determining whether the file in the virtualized version of the file system is represented as a virtual file that is not actually stored on the at least one of one or more server computing devices;

generating, in the at least one of the one or more server computing devices, the virtual file in response to determining that the file in the virtualized version of the file system is represented as a virtual file, content of the virtual file being dynamically generated to include at least portions of multiple actual files of the file system, wherein the virtual file is generated at least in part by transforming at least one of the plurality of files excluded from the virtualized version of the file system from a first format corresponding to the at least one of the plurality of files into a second format corresponding to the virtual file;

determining, in the at least one of the one or more server computing devices, whether a plurality of versions of the file are available to the virtualized version of the file system in response to determining that the file is not a virtual file;

identifying, in the at least one of the one or more server computing devices, at least one of the plurality of versions of the file to be accessed in response to determining that the plurality of versions of the file are available to the virtualized version of the file system;

obtaining, in the at least one of the one or more server computing devices, a modification to the virtual file from the client computing device of the user;

determining, in the at least one of the one or more server computing devices, that the modification to the virtual file complies with at least one file validation rule; and

applying, in the at least one of the one or more server computing devices, the modification to at least one of the multiple actual files used in generating the virtual file in response to a determination that the modification to the virtual file complies with the at least one file validation rule.

21. The method of claim 20, wherein the first format comprises an extensible markup language (XML) document format.

22. The method of claim 20, wherein the file system includes a plurality of versions of one of the plurality of files, and the virtualized version of the file system includes at most one of the versions of the one of the plurality of files.

23. The method of claim 20, wherein the transforming further comprises decrypting the at least one file excluded from the virtualized version of the file system.

24. The method of claim 20, wherein access to the virtualized version of the file system is facilitated through a version of a web-based distributed authoring and versioning (WebDAV) protocol.