Javascript code to upload a file

Upload a File in JavaScript

HTML has a file input tag that lets users select one or more files to upload. For example, below is HTML that defines a file input .

Given an , you can access the selected file as a blob by accessing input.files[0] :

const input = document.querySelector('input[type="file"]'); const file = input.files[0]; file instanceof File; // true file instanceof Blob; // true

Uploading a File

Once you have a blob, you can upload it using JavaScript’s built-in FormData class. Axios supports HTTP POST requests with FormData , so uploading a file is easy:

const formData = new FormData(); formData.append('myimage.png', file); // Post the form, just make sure to set the 'Content-Type' header const res = await axios.post('/upload', formData, < headers: < 'Content-Type': 'multipart/form-data' > >);

Server-Side Setup

Parsing FormData uploads on the server side is tricky, you should use an npm module like Formidable to help you out. Below is how you can write the corresponding POST /upload endpoint to the above Axios request.

Note that the below code just returns the file name, it doesn’t actually store the file. Once you have the parsed file in Node.js, you would need to either upload the file to AWS S3 or some other storage service, or store it on your server’s hard drive using fs .

app.post('/upload', function(req, res) < const form = new formidable.IncomingForm(); // Parse `req` and upload all associated files form.parse(req, function(err, fields, files) < if (err) < return res.status(400).json(< error: err.message >); > const [firstFileName] = Object.keys(files); res.json(< filename: firstFileName >); >); >);

For example, here’s an upload endpoint that uploads the file to a bucket named ‘masteringjs-test’ in AWS S3:

const AWS = require('aws-sdk'); app.post('/upload', function(req, res) < const form = new formidable.IncomingForm(); // Parse `req` and upload all associated files form.parse(req, function(err, fields, files) < if (err) < return res.status(400).json(< error: err.message >); > const [firstKey] = Object.keys(files); const upload = < Bucket: 'masteringjs-test', Body: fs.createReadStream(files[firstKey].path), Key: files[firstKey].name >; s3.upload(upload, (err) => < if (err) < return res.status(400).json(< error: err.message >); > return res.json(< ok: 1 >); >); >); >);

More Fundamentals Tutorials

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How to Upload Files with JavaScript

Austin Gil

I recently published a tutorial showing how to upload files with HTML. That’s great, but it’s a bit limited to using the native browser form behavior, which causes the page to refresh.

In this tutorial, I want to show you how to do the same thing with JavaScript to avoid the page refresh. That way, you can have the same functionality, but with better user experience.

How to Set Up an Event Handler

Let’s say you have an HTML form that looks like this:

With HTML, to access a file on the user’s device, we have to use an with the “file” type . And in order to create the HTTP request to upload the file, we have to use a element.

When dealing with JavaScript, the first part is still true. We still need the file input to access the files on the device. But browsers have a Fetch API that we can use to make HTTP requests without forms.

I still like to include a form because:

1. Progressive enhancement: If JavaScript fails for whatever reason, the HTML form will still work.
2. I’m lazy: The form will actually make my work easier later on, as we’ll see.

With that in mind, for JavaScript to submit this form, I’ll set up a “submit” event handler.

const form = document.querySelector('form'); form.addEventListener('submit', handleSubmit); /** @param event */ function handleSubmit(event) < // The rest of the logic will go here. >

Throughout the rest of this article, we’ll only be looking at the logic within the event handler function, handleSubmit .

How to Prepare the HTTP Request

The first thing I need to do in this submit handler is call the event’s preventDefault method to stop the browser from reloading the page to submit the form. I like to put this at the end of the event handler so that if there is an exception thrown within the body of this function, preventDefault will not be called, and the browser will fall back to the default behavior.

/** @param event */ function handleSubmit(event) < // Any JS that could fail goes here event.preventDefault(); >

Next, we’ll want to construct the HTTP request using the Fetch API. The Fetch API expects the first argument to be a URL, and a second, optional argument as an Object.

We can get the URL from the form’s action property. It’s available on any form DOM node which we can access using the event’s currentTarget property. If the action is not defined in the HTML, it will default to the browser’s current URL.

/** @param event */ function handleSubmit(event)

Relying on the HTML to define the URL makes it more declarative, keeps our event handler reusable, and our JavaScript bundles smaller. It also maintains functionality if the JavaScript fails.

By default, Fetch sends HTTP requests using the GET method, but to upload a file, we need to use a POST method. We can change the method using fetch ‘s optional second argument. I’ll create a variable for that object and assign the method property, but once again, I’ll grab the value from the form’s method attribute in the HTML.

const url = new URL(form.action); /** @type [1]> */ const fetchOptions = < method: form.method, >; fetch(url, fetchOptions);

Now the only missing piece is actually including the payload in the body of the request.

How to Add the Request Body

If you’ve ever created a Fetch request in the past, you may have included the body as a JSON string or a URLSearchParams object. Unfortunately, neither of those will work to send a file, as they don’t have access to the binary file contents.

Fortunately, there is the FormData browser API. We can use it to construct the request body from the form DOM node. And conveniently, when we do so, it even sets the request’s Content-Type header to multipart/form-data – also a necessary step to transmit the binary data.

const url = new URL(form.action); const formData = new FormData(form); /** @type [1]> */ const fetchOptions = < method: form.method, body: formData, >; fetch(url, fetchOptions);

That’s really the bare minimum needed to upload files with JavaScript. Let’s do a little recap:

1. Access to the file system using a file type input.
2. Construct an HTTP request using the Fetch (or XMLHttpRequest ) API.
3. Set the request method to POST .
4. Include the file in the request body.
5. Set the HTTP Content-Type header to multipart/form-data .

Today we looked at a convenient way of doing that, using an HTML form element with a submit event handler, and using a FormData object in the body of the request. The current handleSumit function should look like this:

/** @param event */ function handleSubmit(event) < const url = new URL(form.action); const formData = new FormData(form); /** @type [1]> */ const fetchOptions = < method: form.method, body: formData, >; fetch(url, fetchOptions); event.preventDefault(); >

Unfortunately, the current submit handler is not very reusable. Every request will include a body set to a FormData object and a “ Content-Type ” header set to multipart/form-data . This is too brittle. Bodies are not allowed in GET requests, and we may want to support different content types in other POST requests.

How to Make it Reusable

We can make our code more robust to handle GET and POST requests, and send the appropriate Content-Type header. We’ll do so by creating a URLSearchParams object in addition to the FormData , and running some logic based on whether the request method should be POST or GET . I’ll try to lay out the logic below:

Is the request using a POST method?

— Yes: is the form’s enctype attribute multipart/form-data ?

— — Yes: set the body of the request to the FormData object. The browser will automatically set the “ Content-Type ” header to multipart/form-data .

— — No: set the body of the request to the URLSearchParams object. The browser will automatically set the “ Content-Type ” header to application/x-www-form-urlencoded .

— No: We can assume it’s a GET request. Modify the URL to include the data as query string parameters.

The refactored solution looks like:

/** @param event */ function handleSubmit(event) < /** @type */ const form = event.currentTarget; const url = new URL(form.action); const formData = new FormData(form); const searchParams = new URLSearchParams(formData); /** @type [1]> */ const fetchOptions = < method: form.method, >; if (form.method.toLowerCase() === 'post') < if (form.enctype === 'multipart/form-data') < fetchOptions.body = formData; >else < fetchOptions.body = searchParams; >> else < url.search = searchParams; >fetch(url, fetchOptions); event.preventDefault(); >

I really like this solution for a number of reasons:

• It can be used for any form.
• It relies on the underlying HTML as the declarative source of configuration.
• The HTTP request behaves the same as with an HTML form. This follows the principle of progressive enhancement, so file upload works the same when JavaScript is working properly or when it fails.

Thank you so much for reading. I hope you found this useful. If you liked this article, and want to support me, the best ways to do so are to share it, sign up for my newsletter, and follow me on Twitter.

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How to upload files to the server using JavaScript

Uploading a file and process it in the backend in one of the most common file handling functionalities in a web app: think about uploading an avatar or an attachment.

Say we have an HTML file input element:

input type="file" id="fileUpload" />

We register a change handler on the #fileUpload DOM element, and when the user chooses an image, we trigger the handleImageUpload() function passing in the file selected.

const handleImageUpload = event =>  const files = event.target.files const formData = new FormData()  formData.append('myFile', files[0]) fetch('/saveImage',   method: 'POST',  body: formData  >)  .then(response => response.json())  .then(data =>   console.log(data.path)  >)  .catch(error =>   console.error(error)  >) > document.querySelector('#fileUpload').addEventListener('change', event =>  handleImageUpload(event) >)

We use the Fetch API to send the file to the server. When the server returns successfully, it will send us the image path in the path property.

With that, we will do what we need to do, like updating the interface with the image.

Handling the file upload server-side using Node.js

The server part is detailed here below. I’m using Node.js with the Express framework to handle the request.

npm install express-fileupload

and add it to your middleware:

import fileupload from 'express-fileupload' //or const fileupload = require('express-fileupload')

After you created your Express app, add:

This is needed because otherwise the server can’t parse file uploads.

Now uploaded files are provided in req.files . If you forget to add that middleware, req.files would be undefined .

app.post('/saveImage', (req, res) =>  const fileName = req.files.myFile.name const path = __dirname + '/images/' + fileName  image.mv(path, (error) =>  if (error)   console.error(error)  res.writeHead(500,  'Content-Type': 'application/json'  >)  res.end(JSON.stringify(< status: 'error', message: error >)) return  >  res.writeHead(200,  'Content-Type': 'application/json'  >)  res.end(JSON.stringify(< status: 'success', path: '/img/houses/' + fileName >))  >) >)

This is the smallest amount of code needed to handle files.

We call the mv property of the uploaded image. That is provided to us by the express-fileupload module. We move it to path and then we communicate the success (or an error!) back to the client.

Check the properties of the files uploaded client-side

If you need to check the filetype or the file size, you can preprocess them in the handleImageUpload function, like this:

const handleImageUpload = event =>  const files = event.target.files const myImage = files[0] const imageType = /image.*/ if (!myImage.type.match(imageType))  alert('Sorry, only images are allowed') return  > if (myImage.size > (100*1024))  alert('Sorry, the max allowed size for images is 100KB') return  > //.  >

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