I think this is the correct place to post this.
Anyway, does anyone know how the photo system at facebook works? I am wondering the folder structure they are using. It looks like they are running their photo servers off of several subdomains of fbcdn.net (ie. http://photos-a.ak.fbcdn.net). I think they have only been using fbcdn.net for pictures for about a year and half or so. But anyway, they obviously can't put all the pictures into one giant folder. An example of the folder system is
HTML Code:
http://photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/vWWWW/XX/YY/ZZZZZZZZZ/imageNum.jpg
where W, X, Y and Z represent numbers (I had to wrap it in HTML tags so the entire URL could be seen). It looks like they have a few parent folders (W), which have a bunch of child folders (X, Y, Z).
What is the threshold of the number of pictures allowed in a folder before a new one is made? Does every member's pictures just get thrown into the current folder (Z) until the threshold is met, or does every member get their own parent folder? What happens when an image is deleted? I know there have been some ToS issues about the pictures not actually being deleted, but lets assume this is a prefect world, does that folder "reopen" to allow another new picture to take its place? I'm not looking for exact answers, just hoping that someone might have an idea how the system works or how a similar system works.
Thanks! |
