# Formidable

[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/felixge/node-formidable.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/felixge/node-formidable)

## Purpose

A Node.js module for parsing form data, especially file uploads.

## Current status

**Maintainers Wanted:** Please see https://github.com/felixge/node-formidable/issues/412

This module was developed for [Transloadit](http://transloadit.com/), a service focused on uploading
and encoding images and videos. It has been battle-tested against hundreds of GB of file uploads from
a large variety of clients and is considered production-ready.

## Features

* Fast (~500mb/sec), non-buffering multipart parser
* Automatically writing file uploads to disk
* Low memory footprint
* Graceful error handling
* Very high test coverage

## Installation

```sh
npm i -S formidable
```

This is a low level package, and if you're using a high level framework such as Express, chances are it's already included in it. You can [read this discussion](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11295554/how-to-disable-express-bodyparser-for-file-uploads-node-js) about how Formidable is integrated with Express.

Note: Formidable requires [gently](http://github.com/felixge/node-gently) to run the unit tests, but you won't need it for just using the library.

## Example

Parse an incoming file upload.
```javascript
var formidable = require('formidable'),
    http = require('http'),
    util = require('util');

http.createServer(function(req, res) {
  if (req.url == '/upload' && req.method.toLowerCase() == 'post') {
    // parse a file upload
    var form = new formidable.IncomingForm();

    form.parse(req, function(err, fields, files) {
      res.writeHead(200, {'content-type': 'text/plain'});
      res.write('received upload:\n\n');
      res.end(util.inspect({fields: fields, files: files}));
    });

    return;
  }

  // show a file upload form
  res.writeHead(200, {'content-type': 'text/html'});
  res.end(
    '<form action="/upload" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">'+
    '<input type="text" name="title"><br>'+
    '<input type="file" name="upload" multiple="multiple"><br>'+
    '<input type="submit" value="Upload">'+
    '</form>'
  );
}).listen(8080);
```
## API

### Formidable.IncomingForm
```javascript
var form = new formidable.IncomingForm()
```
Creates a new incoming form.

```javascript
form.encoding = 'utf-8';
```
Sets encoding for incoming form fields.

```javascript
form.uploadDir = "/my/dir";
```
Sets the directory for placing file uploads in. You can move them later on using
`fs.rename()`. The default is `os.tmpdir()`.

```javascript
form.keepExtensions = false;
```
If you want the files written to `form.uploadDir` to include the extensions of the original files, set this property to `true`.

```javascript
form.type
```
Either 'multipart' or 'urlencoded' depending on the incoming request.

```javascript
form.maxFieldsSize = 2 * 1024 * 1024;
```
Limits the amount of memory all fields together (except files) can allocate in bytes.
If this value is exceeded, an `'error'` event is emitted. The default
size is 2MB.

```javascript
form.maxFields = 1000;
```
Limits the number of fields that the querystring parser will decode. Defaults
to 1000 (0 for unlimited).

```javascript
form.hash = false;
```
If you want checksums calculated for incoming files, set this to either `'sha1'` or `'md5'`.

```javascript
form.multiples = false;
```
If this option is enabled, when you call `form.parse`, the `files` argument will contain arrays of files for inputs which submit multiple files using the HTML5 `multiple` attribute.

```javascript
form.bytesReceived
```
The amount of bytes received for this form so far.

```javascript
form.bytesExpected
```
The expected number of bytes in this form.

```javascript
form.parse(request, [cb]);
```
Parses an incoming node.js `request` containing form data. If `cb` is provided, all fields and files are collected and passed to the callback:


```javascript
form.parse(req, function(err, fields, files) {
  // ...
});

form.onPart(part);
```
You may overwrite this method if you are interested in directly accessing the multipart stream. Doing so will disable any `'field'` / `'file'` events  processing which would occur otherwise, making you fully responsible for handling the processing.

```javascript
form.onPart = function(part) {
  part.addListener('data', function() {
    // ...
  });
}
```
If you want to use formidable to only handle certain parts for you, you can do so:
```javascript
form.onPart = function(part) {
  if (!part.filename) {
    // let formidable handle all non-file parts
    form.handlePart(part);
  }
}
```
Check the code in this method for further inspiration.


### Formidable.File
```javascript
file.size = 0
```
The size of the uploaded file in bytes. If the file is still being uploaded (see `'fileBegin'` event), this property says how many bytes of the file have been written to disk yet.
```javascript
file.path = null
```
The path this file is being written to. You can modify this in the `'fileBegin'` event in
case you are unhappy with the way formidable generates a temporary path for your files.
```javascript
file.name = null
```
The name this file had according to the uploading client.
```javascript
file.type = null
```
The mime type of this file, according to the uploading client.
```javascript
file.lastModifiedDate = null
```
A date object (or `null`) containing the time this file was last written to. Mostly
here for compatibility with the [W3C File API Draft](http://dev.w3.org/2006/webapi/FileAPI/).
```javascript
file.hash = null
```
If hash calculation was set, you can read the hex digest out of this var.

#### Formidable.File#toJSON()

  This method returns a JSON-representation of the file, allowing you to
  `JSON.stringify()` the file which is useful for logging and responding
  to requests.

### Events


#### 'progress'

Emitted after each incoming chunk of data that has been parsed. Can be used to roll your own progress bar.

```javascript
form.on('progress', function(bytesReceived, bytesExpected) {
});
```



#### 'field'

Emitted whenever a field / value pair has been received.

```javascript
form.on('field', function(name, value) {
});
```

#### 'fileBegin'

Emitted whenever a new file is detected in the upload stream. Use this event if
you want to stream the file to somewhere else while buffering the upload on
the file system.

```javascript
form.on('fileBegin', function(name, file) {
});
```

#### 'file'

Emitted whenever a field / file pair has been received. `file` is an instance of `File`.

```javascript
form.on('file', function(name, file) {
});
```

#### 'error'

Emitted when there is an error processing the incoming form. A request that experiences an error is automatically paused, you will have to manually call `request.resume()` if you want the request to continue firing `'data'` events.

```javascript
form.on('error', function(err) {
});
```

#### 'aborted'


Emitted when the request was aborted by the user. Right now this can be due to a 'timeout' or 'close' event on the socket. After this event is emitted, an `error` event will follow. In the future there will be a separate 'timeout' event (needs a change in the node core).
```javascript
form.on('aborted', function() {
});
```

##### 'end'
```javascript
form.on('end', function() {
});
```
Emitted when the entire request has been received, and all contained files have finished flushing to disk. This is a great place for you to send your response.



## Changelog

### v1.1.1 (2017-01-15)

 * Fix DeprecationWarning about os.tmpDir() (Christian)
 * Update `buffer.write` order of arguments for Node 7 (Kornel Lesiński)
 * JSON Parser emits error events to the IncomingForm (alessio.montagnani)
 * Improved Content-Disposition parsing (Sebastien)
 * Access WriteStream of fs during runtime instead of include time (Jonas Amundsen)
 * Use built-in toString to convert buffer to hex (Charmander)
 * Add hash to json if present (Nick Stamas)
 * Add license to package.json (Simen Bekkhus)

### v1.0.14 (2013-05-03)

* Add failing hash tests. (Ben Trask)
* Enable hash calculation again (Eugene Girshov)
* Test for immediate data events (Tim Smart)
* Re-arrange IncomingForm#parse (Tim Smart)

### v1.0.13

* Only update hash if update method exists (Sven Lito)
* According to travis v0.10 needs to go quoted (Sven Lito)
* Bumping build node versions (Sven Lito)
* Additional fix for empty requests (Eugene Girshov)
* Change the default to 1000, to match the new Node behaviour. (OrangeDog)
* Add ability to control maxKeys in the querystring parser. (OrangeDog)
* Adjust test case to work with node 0.9.x (Eugene Girshov)
* Update package.json (Sven Lito)
* Path adjustment according to eb4468b (Markus Ast)

### v1.0.12

* Emit error on aborted connections (Eugene Girshov)
* Add support for empty requests (Eugene Girshov)
* Fix name/filename handling in Content-Disposition (jesperp)
* Tolerate malformed closing boundary in multipart (Eugene Girshov)
* Ignore preamble in multipart messages (Eugene Girshov)
* Add support for application/json (Mike Frey, Carlos Rodriguez)
* Add support for Base64 encoding (Elmer Bulthuis)
* Add File#toJSON (TJ Holowaychuk)
* Remove support for Node.js 0.4 & 0.6 (Andrew Kelley)
* Documentation improvements (Sven Lito, Andre Azevedo)
* Add support for application/octet-stream (Ion Lupascu, Chris Scribner)
* Use os.tmpdir() to get tmp directory (Andrew Kelley)
* Improve package.json (Andrew Kelley, Sven Lito)
* Fix benchmark script (Andrew Kelley)
* Fix scope issue in incoming_forms (Sven Lito)
* Fix file handle leak on error (OrangeDog)

## License

Formidable is licensed under the MIT license.

## Ports

* [multipart-parser](http://github.com/FooBarWidget/multipart-parser): a C++ parser based on formidable

## Credits

* [Ryan Dahl](http://twitter.com/ryah) for his work on [http-parser](http://github.com/ry/http-parser) which heavily inspired multipart_parser.js