Where's my uploaded file?

[Allen Williams]

I am trying to upload a file, and the browser (a Firefox derivative called Iceweasel,distributed with Debian Linux) doesn't seem to be sending the file. The basic form is like this:

<form id="uploadform" action="/members/servlet/MapsAjaxSupport"
enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">
<div class="fileinput">
<input id="pathfileup" type="file" />
<input id="upbut" type="submit" value="Upload" class="formbutton">
</div><!-- fileinput -->
</form>

When the request hits my servlet, I iterate through the pieces using the jakarta commons file upload, and never get a file, although I get everything else (added to the form with Javascript). Here is what I'm printing out from the request, using the header map & getting a reader on the request body:

**********
Request Header Values
Context Path= ''
Content Type= 'multipart/form-data; boundary=---------------------------81707749216045394012024245416'

Header Name/Values
Oct 28 20:50:05: host
Oct 28 20:50:05: anw-dev
Oct 28 20:50:05: user-agent
Oct 28 20:50:05: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070310 Iceweasel/2.0.0.3 (Debian-2.0.0.3-1)
Oct 28 20:50:05: accept
Oct 28 20:50:05: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
Oct 28 20:50:05: accept-language
Oct 28 20:50:05: en-us,en;q=0.5
Oct 28 20:50:05: accept-encoding
Oct 28 20:50:05: gzip,deflate
Oct 28 20:50:05: accept-charset
Oct 28 20:50:05: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Oct 28 20:50:05: Keep-Alive
Oct 28 20:50:05: 300
Oct 28 20:50:05: connection
Oct 28 20:50:05: keep-alive
Oct 28 20:50:05: referer
Oct 28 20:50:05: https://anw-dev/members/trbmap.jsp?tkey=2&mkey=2
Oct 28 20:50:05: cookie
Oct 28 20:50:05: userid=frank; pwd=xxxxxxxxxxx; JSESSIONID=7915F7EEB596B0F95C709B9F8AD2A276
Oct 28 20:50:05: content-type
Oct 28 20:50:05: multipart/form-data; boundary=---------------------------81707749216045394012024245416
Oct 28 20:50:05: content-length
Oct 28 20:50:05: 669

The body of the request follows:

Oct 28 20:50:05: -----------------------------81707749216045394012024245416
Oct 28 20:50:05: Content-Disposition: form-data; name="ajaxreq"
<null>
Oct 28 20:50:05: uppth
Oct 28 20:50:05: -----------------------------81707749216045394012024245416
Oct 28 20:50:05: Content-Disposition: form-data; name="name"
<null>
Oct 28 20:50:05: Path Name.
Oct 28 20:50:05: -----------------------------81707749216045394012024245416
Oct 28 20:50:05: Content-Disposition: form-data; name="desc"
<null>
Oct 28 20:50:05: A description of this path goes here.
Oct 28 20:50:05: -----------------------------81707749216045394012024245416
Oct 28 20:50:05: Content-Disposition: form-data; name="mapkey"
<null>
Oct 28 20:50:05: 7
Oct 28 20:50:05: -----------------------------81707749216045394012024245416
Oct 28 20:50:05: Content-Disposition: form-data; name="closed"
<null>
Oct 28 20:50:05: on
Oct 28 20:50:05: -----------------------------81707749216045394012024245416--

Everything looks perfect, right down to the two "minus" signs terminating the request, but no file. All the documentation says to use "multipart/form-data", so I assume this is OK. Any help would be appreciated.

TIA,
anw

[Bear Bibeault]

Debugging step #1; What happens when you try it with another browser?

[Allen Williams]

I get the same thing on the Epiphany browser, but it is also using the Gecko engine, I think. I'll try it in IE tomorrow, and post again.

Thanks!

[Emanuel Kadziela]

Have you tried using

FileUploadBase.parseRequest(javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest)

from the commons fileupload to get the list of file items?

[Allen Williams]

Yes, that is what I'm using. I could print out what happens when I iterate through, but basically, I get everything & no file. What I printed out above is the raw request coming from the browser, which shows the file is not attached.

[Allen Williams]

I didn't get to my office today to try IE or the "canonical" Windows version of Firefox, but will do that tomorrow. Meantime, I'm doing a lot of strange stuff to try to "pretty up" the file upload widget on the page. As you are probably aware, for "security reasons" (the ultimate excuse for making everything a pain in the a** :rolleyes , the file upload input tag is pretty much uncustomizable. Plus, I attach a bunch of other stuff I need to know about to invisible form inputs, so I'm going to try to deconstruct that stuff to the point I only have the file input, then, if that works, add stuff back in until it breaks, and figure it out that way.

Thanks, and I'll post my results.

[Allen Williams]

OK, I stripped out everything except the normal, plain file upload input tag, and tried it with both Iceweasel & "canonical" Firefox, and still don't get the file. The content of the request is reduced to:

The body of the request follows:

Oct 29 16:36:30: -----------------------------20014300982800--

Nothing.

Any thoughts?

[Allen Williams]

OK, I think I found the problem. I fixed it in the stripped down version, but need to put everything else in and see if it still works. On the W3C.org site, I found the following statement:

17.13.2 Successful controls

A successful control is "valid" for submission. Every successful control has its control name paired with its current value as part of the submitted form data set. A successful control must be defined within a FORM element and must have a control name.(Emphasis mine)

If you'll notice in the original html I posted, there's no name attribute. When I added that, I got the file section in the request.

Thanks for the help,
Allen