How We Programmatically Handle Files
We consider files grouped data that is not stored in our primary PostgreSQL database, such as images, Microsoft Word documents, PDF files, audio and video. This blog post will go over how we capture user uploads, store the files on our server, and render them to users.
Designing a Data Model
We have two different type of files in our system, ResponseDocuments or
files that our clients upload in response to questions we ask them and
MatterDocuments or files that we upload for our clients when providing
legal advice. If you have read our blog post about
authorization, portal users can upload documents in
response to a question, and lawyer and admin users can upload matter
documents. This is enforced with a PostgreSQL check before creating either
record.
Storage in GCP Buckets
We maintain two GCP buckets for storing files, one for unprocessed uploads that any user can upload to and one for storing the files after they have been processed by our server.
Unprocessed Uploads Bucket
Uploaded documents in the unprocessed folder are deleted after 2 hours from
when it was uploaded. A filename in this bucket is the base64 encoding of
the uploadURL created from Transloadit.
Private Assets Bucket
After a document is processed by our server, we copy the file from the
unprocessed uploads folder to our private assets bucket. Each file follows
the format matters/${matterId}/filename or
responses/${responseId}/filename.
You may have correctly guessed that MatterDocuments are stored in the form of
matters/${matterId}/filename and ResponseDocuments are stored in the form of
responses/${responseId}/filename.
File Uploads
We use Transloadit to process file uploads from our application. Our upload
process is two HTTP requests. First, a HTTP POST request is made to Transloadit
to upload our file to its server. Second, with the uploadURL returned from
Transloadit, a user sends a GraphQL mutation request to our API to create a
response_document or matter_document with either the
createResponseDocument or createMatterDocument mutation respectively.
Choose a Transloadit Template and getTransloaditToken
Upload to Transloadit
After you upload a file to Transloadit, Transloadit will return an uploadURL
in the response body. This uploadURL is what is sent to react-hook-form.