Patent Application
20160110555
The present invention relates to a resource sharing apparatus, method, and non-transitory computer readable storage medium thereof. Specifically, the present invention provides a resource sharing mechanism. By the resource sharing mechanism, two separate resource sharing apparatus which belong to different systems can access the resources of each other via share links.
With the advancement of network technologies in recent years, various network applications have been developed to satisfy the overwhelming demand for file sharing, file transferring and the like. In general, the network architectures used in modern network applications include the client-server network architecture, the peer-to-peer (P2P) network architecture, and a hybrid of the client-server network and P2P network architectures. The P2P network architecture may have the advantage of no central server; however, it offers almost no security, and the resources shared in the P2P network architecture are usually read only. By contrast, although the client-server network architecture always has a central server, it is much more stable, flexible, and secure, and offers various operations on the resources (e.g., a read operation, a write operation, an execute operation, etc.).
Currently, several organizations or companies provide cloud storage services for their employees/registered users to store their files and share the files and/or folders with other people. The registered users resided in the same cloud storage system can share their files or folders with each other, and the shared files or folders can have different permissions for different users by according to different sharing purposes. However, since different cloud storage systems are independent and do not cooperate with each other, the registered users of the different cloud storage systems cannot directly share their files or folders with each other like in a cloud storage system. Under this circumstance, people need to register their own accounts in several cloud storage systems, and then upload the files or folders to the corresponding cloud storage system to share files or folders to people in the same cloud storage system. It is inconvenient when different people residing at different cloud storage systems try to share files or folders with each other.
According to the above descriptions, an urgent need exists in the art to provide a resource sharing mechanism for different cloud storage systems to make resources of different cloud storage systems accessible to each other.
An objective of the present invention includes providing a resource sharing mechanism for different resource sharing apparatus to access the resources of each other via the share links. By the resource sharing mechanism of the prevent invention, people can directly share files or folders stored in one cloud storage system to other people reside at another cloud storage system. As a result, the present invention allows users to share resources of different cloud storage systems in a more convenient way, and make more efficient use of the resources of these cloud storage systems.
To achieve the aforesaid objective, certain embodiments of the present invention include a resource sharing apparatus. The resource sharing apparatus comprises a storage medium, a network interface and a processor. The storage medium is configured to store a management system and a plurality of resources. The network interface is connected to a network. The processor is electrically connected to the storage medium and the network interface, and configured to run a federated resource sharing program installed in the management system. The federated resource sharing program is configured to: receive a share request associated with an internal user account of the resource sharing apparatus for sharing a selected resource of the resources with an external user account of a remote resource sharing apparatus; create a share link of the selected resource according to the share request; generate a share message with the share link and the external user account; and transmit the share message to the remote resource sharing apparatus via the network interface so that the remote resource sharing apparatus creates an access point for the external user account according to the share message.
In addition, certain embodiments of the present invention include a resource sharing method for use in a resource sharing apparatus. The resource sharing apparatus comprises a storage medium, a network interface and a processor. The storage medium stores a management system and a plurality of resource. The processor runs a federated resource sharing program installed in the management system to execute the resource sharing method, and the resource sharing method comprises the following steps of: receiving a share request associated with an internal user account of the resource sharing apparatus for sharing a selected resource of the resources with an external user account of a remote resource sharing apparatus; creating a share link of the selected resource according to the share request; generating a share message with the share link and the external user account; and transmitting the share message to the remote resource sharing apparatus via the network interface so that the remote resource sharing apparatus creates an access point for the external user account according to the share message.
Besides, certain embodiments of the present invention include a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having a federated resource sharing program stored therein. The federated resource sharing program executes a resource sharing method after being loaded into a resource sharing apparatus and installed in a management system of the resource sharing apparatus. The resource sharing apparatus is connected to a network. The resource sharing method comprising the following steps of: receiving a share request associated with an internal user account of the resource sharing apparatus for sharing a selected resource of the resources with an external user account of a remote resource sharing apparatus; creating a share link of the selected resource according to the share request; generating a share message with the share link and the external user account; and transmitting the share message to the remote resource sharing apparatus via the network interface so that the remote resource sharing apparatus creates an access point for the external user account according to the share message.
Furthermore, in order to achieve the aforesaid objective, certain embodiments of the present invention include a resource sharing apparatus. The resource sharing apparatus comprises a storage medium, a network interface and a processor. The storage medium is configured to store a management system. The network interface is connected to a network. The processor is electrically connected to the storage medium and the network interface, and configured to run a federated resource sharing program installed in the management system. The federated resource sharing program is configured to: receive a share message with a share link and an internal user account from the remote resource sharing apparatus, wherein the share link is created for sharing a selected resource stored in the remote resource sharing apparatus and associated with an external user account of the remote resource sharing apparatus; and create an access point for the internal user account according to the share message.
In addition, certain embodiments of the present invention include a resource sharing method for use in a resource sharing apparatus to achieve the aforesaid objective. The resource sharing apparatus comprises a storage medium, a network interface and a processor. The storage medium stores a management system. The processor runs a federated resource sharing program installed in the management system to execute the resource sharing method, and the resource sharing method comprising the following steps of: receiving a share message with a share link and an internal user account from the remote resource sharing apparatus, wherein the share link is created for sharing a selected resource stored in the remote resource sharing apparatus and associated with an external user account of the remote resource sharing apparatus; and creating an access point for the internal user account according to the share message.
Besides, certain embodiments of the present invention include a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having a federated resource sharing program stored therein. The federated resource sharing program executes a resource sharing method after being loaded into a resource sharing apparatus and installed in a management system of the resource sharing apparatus. The resource sharing apparatus is connected to a network. The resource sharing method comprising the following steps of: receiving a share message with a share link and an internal user account from the remote resource sharing apparatus, wherein the share link is created for sharing a selected resource stored in the remote resource sharing apparatus and associated with an external user account of the remote resource sharing apparatus; and creating an access point for the internal user account according to the share message.
The detailed technology and preferred embodiments implemented for the subject invention are described in the following paragraphs accompanying the appended drawings for people skilled in this field to well appreciate the features of the claimed invention.
The present invention includes a resource sharing apparatus, method, and non-transitory computer readable storage medium thereof. In the following descriptions, the invention will be explained with reference to certain example embodiments thereof. It shall be appreciated that theses example embodiments are not intended to limit the claimed invention to any specific examples, embodiments, environment, applications or implementations described in these embodiments. Therefore, the description of these example embodiments is only for purpose of illustration rather than to limit the invention and the scope claimed in this application shall be governed by the claims.
In the following embodiments and the attached drawings, elements unrelated to the present invention are omitted from depiction; and dimensional relationships among individual elements in the attached drawings are illustrated only for ease of understanding, but not to limit the actual scale.
A first embodiment of the present invention is shown in
As shown in
After receiving the share request 102 associated with the user account UA1 for sharing the selected resource with the user account UA2, the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 creates a share link of the selected resource according to the share request 102. The share link of the selected resource is constructed based on the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), for example “https://url.domain/1A2B3C4D,” so that the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 could access the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 via the share link. It is noted that for the resource sharing apparatus RSA1, the user account UA1 is an “internal user account” and the user account UA2 is an “external user account”; conversely, for the resource sharing apparatus RSA2, the user account UA1 is an “external user account” and the user account UA2 is an “internal user account”.
Afterwards, the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 generates a share message 104 with the share link and the user account UA2, and transmits the share message 104 to the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 via the network 13. After receiving the share message 104 with the share link of the selected resource and the user account UA2 from the resource sharing apparatus RSA1, the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 creates an access point for the user account UA2 according to the share message 104. In this way, when the register user RU2 operates the user device 11b (e.g., personal computer) to access the resource sharing apparatus RSA2, the register user RU2 is able to access the selected resource of the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 via the access point. It is noted that the user device 11a and the user device 11b may be a personal computer, a handheld device, or any other user device with a network connection function.
In another embodiment, the registered user RU1 may set an access permission for the registered user RU2 to access the selected resource. In this case, the share request 102 further includes access permission information indicating permitted operations (e.g., a read operation, a write operation, an execute operation, etc.) for the registered user RU2. Therefore, the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 may create the share link further based on the access permission information. Besides, in another embodiment, the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 may further encrypts the share link by a passkey for the security purpose, and generates the share message 104 with the encrypted share link and the access permission information. Accordingly, the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 decrypts the share link by a corresponding passkey. For example, the share link of the selected resource could be encrypted by the public key of the user account UA2 of the resource sharing apparatus RSA2, and the encrypted share link could be decrypted by the private key of the user account UA2 of the resource sharing apparatus RSA2. Nevertheless, there are several encryption and decryption technologies applicable to encrypt and to decrypt the selected resource and these technologies have been well known by people skilled in this art; it therefore will not be further described herein.
In other embodiments, the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 further creates a share record in a database installed in the management system running in the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 to record a link value of the share link, an index of the selected resource, the access permission information, and the passkey, as shown in
In other embodiments, the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 further creates a group for the user account UA2 according to the share request 102 or another particular request from the user device 11a. In this case, the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 further records the group in the share record. Moreover, other user accounts of the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 or other resource sharing apparatus in the same group may have same permission to access the selected resource.
As shown in
If the authentication is passed, the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 accesses the selected resource and transmits a resource access response 108 to the resource sharing apparatus RSA2. For example, the access request 106 may request to get the selected resource (i.e. a file), and thus, the resource access response 108 contains the selected resource. Otherwise, if the authentication of the access request 106 is not passed, the resource access response 108 may contain relevant information to inform the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 of the access result (i.e. access failure). For example, the screen of the user device 11b may show a pop-up notification information window to inform the registered user UA2 of the access failure.
It shall be appreciated that the share request 102 and the access request 106 in the above description are created based on the operations of the registered user UA1 and the registered user UA2 respectively; however, such operations could be automatically executed by the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 and the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 themselves in some practical scenarios. For example, by presetting a share rule, any files uploaded to the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 by the user account UA1 would be automatically shared with the user account UA2 of the resource sharing apparatus RSA2, and the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 would automatically access the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 to get the copies of the files for the user account UA2.
A second embodiment of the present invention is also referred to
Specifically, the storage medium 21a may be a tangible machine-readable medium or a combination of multiple tangible machine-readable medium for providing the integration apparatus with a permanent storage, such as a flash memory, a hard disk, or any other storage media with the same function and well known to those skilled in the art. The network interface 23a is connected to the network 13. The processor 25a, electrically connected to the storage medium 21a and the network interface 23a, and the processor 25a further runs a federated resource sharing program installed in the management system MS1 to execute several operations as described below.
In concert with the first embodiment, the processor 25a receives the share request 102 associated with the user account UA1 of the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 for sharing the selected resource of the resources with the user account UA2 of the resource sharing apparatus RSA2. Then, the processor 25a creates the share link of the selected resource according to the share request 102, and generates the share message 104 with the share link and the user account UA2. Afterwards, the processor 25a transmits the share message 104 to the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 via the network interface 23a so that the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 creates the access point for the user account UA2 according to the share message 104.
After receiving the access request 106 to access the share link from the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 via the network interface 23a, the processor 25a of the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 determines whether the authentication of the access request 106 is passed. If the authentication of the access request 106 is passed, then the processor 25a accesses the selected resource and transmits a resource access response 108 to the resource sharing apparatus RSA2.
A third embodiment of the present invention is also referred to
In concert with the first embodiment, the processor 25b of the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 receives the share message 104 with the share link and the user account UA2 from the resource sharing apparatus RSA1. The share link is created for sharing the selected resource stored in the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 and associated with the user account UA1 of the resource sharing apparatus RSA1. Next, the processor 25b creates the access point for the user account UA2 according to the share message 104. Afterwards, the processor 25b further transmits the access request 106 to access the share link to the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 via the network interface 23b.
In another embodiment, when the share request 102 further includes access permission information, the processor 25a of the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 creates the share link according the access permission information. And, in another embodiment for security purpose, the processor 25a of the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 may further encrypt the share link by a passkey, and generates the share message 104 with the encrypted share link and the access permission information. In this case, the processor 25b of the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 would decrypt the share link by a corresponding passkey after receiving the share message 104.
Furthermore, in other embodiments, the processor 25a of the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 further creates a share record in the database installed in the management system MS1 to record the link value of the share link, an index of the selected resource, the access permission information, and the passkey. Accordingly, the processor 25a of the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 creates the share link according to the share record. Moreover, the processor 25a may further create a group for the user account UA2 according to the share request 102 or another particular request from the user device 11a, and record the group in the share record.
A fourth embodiment of the present invention is an extension of the first embodiment of the present invention and is shown in
As shown in
After receiving the quick access request 302, the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 determines whether an authentication of the quick access request 302 is passed. Next, the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 creates a file layout of the selected resource according to the quick access request 302 when the authentication is passed, and then transmits a plurality of quick access responses 304a, 304b, 304c with the file layout and the selected resource in parallel to the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 via the network 13 according to the share link created by the resource sharing apparatus RSA1, the temporary share links created by the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 and the port numbers corresponding to the share link and the temporary share links.
Specifically, on the presumption that the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 divides the selected resource into three parts, each of the quick access responses 304a, 304b, 304c may contain one part of the selected resource, respectively. In this case, the quick access responses 304a, 304b, 304c could be transmitted from the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 to the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 in parallel through different port number pairs. In other embodiments, the file layout could be transmitted individually to the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 by another quick access response; however, the scale and way of transmitting the file layout is not used to limit the scope of the present invention.
When the transmission of the selected resource is finished, the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 reconstructs the selected resource from the quick access responses according to the file layout. In addition, there may be one or more acknowledge messages transmitted between the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 and the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 for indicating the result of the transmission. It should be appreciated that, based on the above description, those of ordinary skill in the art can easily understand how the selected resource being transmitted via several quick access responses by using HTTP according to the share links and their corresponding port numbers; therefore, this will not be further described herein.
The above operations of the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 are executed by the processor 25a, while the above operations of the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 are executed by the processor 25b. More specifically, the processor 25a receives the quick access request 302 via the network interface 23a, determines whether the authentication of the quick access request 302 is passed, creates the file layout of the selected resource, and transmits the quick access responses 304a, 304b, 304c via the network interface 23a. On the other hand, the processor 25b transmits the quick access request 302 via the network interface 23b, receives the quick access responses 304a, 304b, 304c via the network interface 23b, and reconstructs the selected resource.
In another scenario as shown in
Similarly, after receiving the quick access request 302 from the resource sharing apparatus RSA2, the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 determines whether the authentication of the quick access request 302 is passed. If the authentication of the quick access request 302 is passed, the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 transmits a quick access response 304 with at least one temporary share link and at least one corresponding port number to the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 via the network 13 so as to indicate that the transferring of the specific resource stored in the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 is permitted.
Next, the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 transmits a plurality of upload messages 306a, 306b, 306c with the specific resource in parallel to the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 according to the share link, the temporary share links and the port numbers corresponding to the share link and the temporary share links. When the transmission of the specific resource is finished, the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 reconstructs the specific resource from the upload message 306a, 306b, 306c according to the file layout. Similarly, there may be one or more acknowledge messages transferred between the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 and the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 for indicating the result of the transmission.
The fifth embodiment of the present invention is depicted in
After clicking the “Next” button, the graphic user interface GUI_1 turns into anther page as shown in
As mentioned earlier, the above actions could be preset, and it will automatically executed by the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 to share the newly uploaded or created resources to the specific registered user of a remote resource sharing apparatus. Since those of ordinary skill in the art can easily understand how to automatically share the resource by presetting, this will not be further described herein.
Now referring to
The notification information could be presented by a pop-up window as shown in
In the case that the registered user RU2 has accepted the selected resource by clicking the “Accept” button, the graphic user interface GUI_2 would be turned into another page as shown in
In other embodiment, the register user RU2 can drag the selected resources (i.e., the Folder A and the Object Z) to his/her own resource space to change the positions of the access points shown on the graphic user interface GUI_2. However, in another embodiment, if the register user RU2 would like to download the selected resources (i.e., the Folder A and the Object Z) to his/her own resource space, he or she could copy the “Folder A” or the “Object Z” to his/her specific resource space. By this way, the operations described in the fourth embodiment may be executed to accelerate the transmission.
The sixth embodiment of the present invention is depicted in
In this case, if a user would like to share a file (e.g., a recipe file) with the smart refrigerator 63, he or she operates the mobile phone 61 to send the share message 104 to the smart refrigerator 63. After receiving the share message 104, the smart refrigerator 63 may automatically accept the share message 104 and create an access point on its graphical user interface. In addition, the smart refrigerator 63 may further automatically download the file from the mobile phone 61 by the access point. Therefore, when the user operates the smart refrigerator 63, he or she could get the recipe on the screen 631 of the smart refrigerator 63.
It is noted that this embodiment takes the mobile phone 61 and the smart refrigerator 63 as the examples; however, those of ordinary skill in the art can easily appreciate that the present invention can be applied to Internet of Things (IoT). The Things having a network connection function could implement the present invention, and are within the scope of the present invention.
The seventh embodiment of the present invention is a resource sharing method, a flow chart of which is shown in
Firstly, step S701 is executed to receive a share request associated with an internal user account of the resource sharing apparatus for sharing a selected resource of the resources with an external user account of a remote resource sharing apparatus. Specifically, the remote resource sharing apparatus is independent of the resource sharing apparatus. Next, step S703 is executed to create a share link of the selected resource according to the share request. Then, the processor further generates a share message with the share link and the external user account in step S705. Thereafter, step S707 is executed to transmit the share message to the remote resource sharing apparatus via the network interface so that the remote resource sharing apparatus creates an access point for the external user account according to the share message.
In other embodiments, the share request further includes access permission information. In this case, the resource sharing method further comprises the following steps of: creating the share link according the access permission information; encrypting the share link by a passkey; and generating the share message with the encrypted share link and the access permission information.
In addition, in other embodiments, the resource sharing method can further comprises the following steps of: creating a share record in a database installed in the management system to record a link value of the share link, an index of the selected resource, the access permission information, and the passkey; and creating the share link according to the share record. Furthermore, in some other embodiments, the resource sharing method further comprises the following steps of: creating a group containing the external user account; and recording the group in the share record.
In another embodiment that the selected resource is accessed via the share link, the resource sharing method further comprise the following steps of: receiving an access request from the remote resource sharing apparatus via the network interface to access the share link; determining whether an authentication of the access request is passed according to the share record; accessing the selected resource when the authentication is passed; and transmitting a resource access response to the remote resource sharing apparatus. In this embodiment, resources could be accessible to the remote resource sharing apparatus under security authentication.
Additionally, in another embodiment that an acceleration of transmission is needed, the resource sharing method further comprise the following steps of: receiving a quick access request from the remote resource sharing apparatus via the network interface to access the share link for downloading the selected resource, wherein the quick access request includes at least one temporary share link and at least one corresponding port number; determining whether an authentication of the quick access request is passed according to the share record; creating a file layout of the selected resource according to the quick access request when the authentication is passed; and transmitting a plurality of quick access responses with the selected resource and the file layout in parallel to the remote resource sharing apparatus via the network interface according to the share link, the at least one temporary share link and the at least one port number.
In addition to the aforesaid steps, the resource sharing method of the present invention can also execute all the operations described in all the aforesaid embodiments and have all the corresponding functions. How this embodiment executes these operations and has these functions will be readily appreciated by those of ordinary skill in the art based on the disclosures of all the aforesaid embodiments, and thus will not be further described again.
The resource sharing method described in this embodiment may be implemented by a federated resource sharing program having a plurality of codes. The federated resource sharing program is a computer program product that can be stored in a non-transitory computer readable storage medium. When the codes are loaded into an electronic device (e.g., the resource sharing apparatus RSA1 in the first to fifth embodiments and the mobile phone 61 in the sixth embodiment) and installed in the management system (e.g., the MS1 in the aforesaid embodiments) thereof, the computer program executes the resource sharing method as described in this embodiment. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium may be an electronic product, such as a read only memory (ROM), a flash memory, a floppy disk, a hard disk, a compact disk (CD), a mobile disk, a magnetic tape, a database accessible to networks, or any other storage media with the same function and well known to those skilled in the art.
The eighth embodiment of the present invention is a resource sharing method, a flow chart of which is shown in
Firstly, step S801 is executed to receive a share message with a share link and an internal user account from the remote resource sharing apparatus. Specifically, the share link is created for sharing a selected resource stored in the remote resource sharing apparatus and associated with an external user account of the remote resource sharing apparatus. Next, step S803 is executed to create an access point for the internal user account according to the share message.
In other embodiments, the share message further includes the access permission information, and the shark link is further encrypted by a passkey. Therefore, the resource sharing method further comprises the following step of: decrypting the share link by a corresponding passkey. Besides, in other embodiments, the resource sharing method further comprises the following steps of: transmitting an access request to the remote resource sharing apparatus via the network interface to access the share link; and receiving a resource access response from the remote resource sharing apparatus.
Additionally, in another embodiment, the resource sharing method further comprises the following steps of: transmitting a quick access request to the remote resource sharing apparatus via the network interface to access the share link for downloading the selected resource, wherein the quick access request includes at least one temporary share link and at least one corresponding port number; and receiving a plurality of quick access responses with the selected resource and a file layout in parallel from the remote resource sharing apparatus via the network interface according to the share link, the at least one temporary share link and the at least one port number.
In addition to the aforesaid steps, the resource sharing method of the present invention can also execute all the operations described in all the aforesaid embodiments and have all the corresponding functions. How this embodiment executes these operations and has these functions will be readily appreciated by those of ordinary skill in the art based on the disclosures of all the aforesaid embodiments, and thus will not be further described again.
The resource sharing method described in this embodiment may be implemented by a federated resource sharing program having a plurality of codes. The federated resource sharing program is a computer program product that can be stored in a non-transitory computer readable storage medium. When the codes are loaded into an electronic device (e.g., the resource sharing apparatus RSA2 in the first to fifth embodiments and the smart refrigerator 63 in the sixth embodiment) and installed in the management system thereof, the computer program executes the resource sharing method as described in this embodiment. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium may be an electronic product, such as a read only memory (ROM), a flash memory, a floppy disk, a hard disk, a compact disk (CD), a mobile disk, a magnetic tape, a database accessible to networks, or any other storage media with the same function and well known to those skilled in the art.
According to the above descriptions, the resource sharing mechanism of the present invention allows different resource sharing apparatus to access resources of each other via the share links. In addition, resources transferring between the different resource sharing apparatus can be achieved via the share links, and the transmission time can be further shortened by parallel transmission via multiple share links (including at least one temporary share link) and their corresponding port numbers. Accordingly, through the resource sharing mechanism of the present invention, resources of different cloud storage systems are accessible to each other to allow users to share the resources of different cloud storage systems in a more convenient way, and make more efficient use of the resources of these cloud storage systems.
The above disclosure is related to the detailed technical contents and inventive features thereof. People skilled in this field may proceed with a variety of modifications and replacements based on the disclosures and suggestions of the invention as described without departing from the characteristics thereof. Nevertheless, although such modifications and replacements are not fully disclosed in the above descriptions, they have substantially been covered in the following claims as appended.
