«

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Ed Jay <>
writing in news::

> I'm using HTML5 Forms to select multiple files for uploading:
>
><form id='form2' name='form2' action="/cgi-bin/upload.pl\"
>method='post'
> enctype='multipart/form-data'>
>
><input type='file' name='myFile0' id='myFile0' value='' multiple
>min='0'
> max='99' files=''>
>
><input type=submit value='Upload Files'>
>
> Is there some way to determine, before uploading, how many files have
> been selected?

Korpela is going to have a field day with this --- Maybe there is
something that can be checked via Javascript?

--
Adrienne Boswell at Home
Arbpen Web Site Design Services
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

On 17 June, 01:07, Ed Jay <ed...@aes-intl.com> wrote:
> Adrienne Boswell wrote:
> >Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Ed Jay <ed...@aes-intl.com>
> >writing innews::
>
> >> I'm using HTML5 Forms to select multiple files for uploading:
>
> >><form id='form2' name='form2' action="/cgi-bin/upload.pl\"
> >>method='post'
> >> enctype='multipart/form-data'>
>
> >><input type='file' name='myFile0' id='myFile0' value='' multiple
> >>min='0'
> >> max='99' files=''>
>
> >><input type=submit value='Upload Files'>
>
> >> Is there some way to determine, before uploading, how many files have
> >> been selected?
>
> >Korpela is going to have a field day with this ---
>
> I expect that. (And, welcome it.)
>
> >Maybe there is
> >something that can be checked via Javascript? *
>
> I'm hopeful, but nothing I've tried has worked. I've tried
> document.forms["form1"].elements["myFile0"].value but it always comes up
> empty.

Your form is called "form2" not "form1"

Ed Jay wrote:

> Captain Paralytic wrote:
[...]
>>> I'm hopeful, but nothing I've tried has worked. I've tried
>>> document.forms["form1"].elements["myFile0"].value but it always
>>> comes up empty.
>>
>> Your form is called "form2" not "form1"
>
> Thanks. My typo error.

First of all, apologies for commenting on this so late. When the thread was
fresh, I was actually having a field day in Peak District.

The code, with the correction, indeed works, for some values of "works".
It's a bit outdated coding style, since these days we normally use a more
direct approach:
document.getElementById("myFile0").value

However, what you get depends on the browser and its settings. This is one
of the areas where security settings may have great impact, and they might
prevent getting the file path, as it can be considered to be in the area of
privacy of the computer or her user. For example, on IE 8 you would get
something like
C:\fakepath\foobar.zap
where "fakepath" appears literally, i.e. the actual path has been masked
out. On Firefox, you would get just
foobar.zap
i.e. the relative filename without hinting what it is relative to.

Moreover, although file input was originally defined in HTML drafts and
specifications as allowing multiple files per one <input type="file">,
browsers generally ignored that and supported only one file per element.
Typically, authors have solved this problem by providing multiple <input
type="file"> elements, possibly generating them on the fly with client-side
JavaScript (so that whenever a new file has been selected, a new file input
dialog appears).

The fancy HTML 5 stuff is in this matter, as usual, rather useless for the
time being. Firefox supports multiple file input when the multiple attribute
is used, as per the HTML 5 draft (so it graciously acts by published
specifications if you throw in some attributes that are invalid according to
published specifications), but IE doesn't. So you might get lured into
thinking you have created multiple file input control when you actually
provide just single file input to most users. Moreover, Firefox only returns
the name of the first file when there are multiple files.

Looking at the current HTML 5 draft, I notice the files attribute which is
supposed to return a FileList object of selected files. So to get the names
of the selected files you would use
document.getElementById("myFile0").files[i].name)
where i is an index to the list of files, starting from 0. If you only wish
to get the number of files, you can use
document.getElementById("myFile0").files.length

Of course such an expression is unsafe, as the browser might not have
implemented this part of the HTML 5 draft. You can use e.g.
if(document.getElementById("myFile0").files) { ... } else { ... }
so that the then part uses the information as above whereas the else part
assumes that the number of files cannot be known (and is most probably
either 1 or 0, though you can probably distinguish between 1 and 0 by
checking whether document.getElementById("myFile0").value is defined or not.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Ed Jay wrote:

> I'll be testing your suggested code and variations. Hopefully, Opera
> has implemented that of which you expound.

I'm afraid it hasn't - just tested on Opera 10.0, and it failed.

Some past versions of Opera were about the only browsers that supported
multiple file submission per one <input type="file"> element. For some odd
reason, they removed that feature

> I'm only concerned about Opera as the browser...we supply our clients
> with a custom version of Opera 9.64, which has implemented multiple
> file selection with one input element.

Well, maybe... I thought they removed that feature earlier, but a custom
version might still have it. Worse still, Opera 10.0 does not seem to let me
even get the filename of the selected file ("security feature", I suppose).

> We require that a minimum of
> three images be uploaded to our site, and so far have had no luck with
> validating the upload, until after the fact (how many were uploaded).

I think you just need to be satisfied with the server-side check. After all,
if a page clearly says at that at least three images be uploaded, it is fair
to let the user know about the violation of this requirement "after the
fact" only.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

On Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:08:53 -0700
Ed Jay <> wrote:

[snip]
>>> I'm only concerned about Opera as the browser...we supply our
>>> clients with a custom version of Opera 9.64, which has
>>> implemented multiple file selection with one input element.
[snip]
>>> We require that a minimum of three images be uploaded to our
>>> site, and so far have had no luck with validating the upload,
>>> until after the fact (how many were uploaded).

If 3 is the minimum then perhaps setting min="3" rather then mim="0"
will suffice, and perhaps setting the max to something realistic
unless 99 files really is the maximum.

If a JavaScript solution is desired, that may be possible providing the
value can be parsed in order to count the files.

I believe it has already been pointed out that files.length would be
correct approach.

This is not intended as a cross browser solution. It is intended for
Opera 9.64, although it may just work on other Opera versions as well.
I think this is a bug and should not work, but until it is fixed.

if(window.opera) {
var clone = document.getElementById('myFile0').cloneNode(true) ;
clone.type = 'text';
alert(clone.value);
}

Now with all that mess, I do wonder what method would be used to
process the $_POST data that Opera sends.

[snip]



--
BootNic Tue Jun 22, 2010 08:51 pm
I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it.
*Samuel Goldwyn*

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