Forms with File Fields - Java

Background

The standard HttpServletRequest class is not capable of handling file input fields in an HTML form. If you use this class, you will only receive the file name as the parameter value and not the entire file itself. In this tutorial, I will show you how to create the HTML form and process the form data using the com.oreilly.servlet package.

Step 1: Creating the Form

To create a form with a file input field, you need two add 2 additional features to any form: an enctype attribute to the form tag and a file input field. Set the enctype as "multipart/form-data". Here is what the code would look like:

 <form action="upload" id="upload" name="upload" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">
 Name: <input type="text" name="name" id="name" />
 Attachment: <input type="file" name="attachment" id="attachment" />
 <input type="submit" value="submit" />
 </form>

Step 2: Processing the form data

Like I mentioned earlier, the standard HttpServletRequest class is not capable of handling file input fields. Luckily, there are several easy-to-use libraries already created for capturing file data from multipart forms. I recommend using the com.oreilly.servlet package. The methods in this library use the same names as the HttpServletRequest methods, making is very easy to learn and use.

Download the jar file from the servlets.com website. Install the jar file to use with your project. (If you are using Eclipse, you can find instructions on how to install .jar files in your project here.)

Import the package at the top of your file.

 import com.oreilly.servlet.*;  

Create a new MultipartRequest object. The constructor can accept several parameters (see the API). I like to use the constructor accepting the following parameters: the HttpServletRequest from the doPost method, the path to the directory where file is to be saved, and the size limit of the files. If you do not specify a size limit of the files, a default of 1MB will be set.

 MultipartRequest mpRequest = new MultipartRequest(request, "/Users/bob/project/attachments", 3000000);  

Once the MultipartRequest object has been initialized, you can retrieve form data. Use the getParameter method to retrieve form input field data for all fields other than the file field. Use this method with the input field name as a parameter to retrieve the value of the field.

 String name = mpRequest.getParameter("name");  

For the file field, use the getFile method to retrieve the file uploaded in the file input field. Use the name of the file input field as a parameter. This method returns a file object, which is the file that was uploaded in the form. The file is saved in the directory specified when creating the MultipartRequest object.

 File file = mpRequest.getFile("attachment");  

That's about it! Simple, right? There are several other methods that you can use in the com.oreilly.servlet package, which are discussed in the API.