[drupal-devel] [feature] JS-based file upload

[Steven]

Issue status update for 
http://drupal.org/node/28483
Post a follow up: 
http://drupal.org/project/comments/add/28483

 Project:      Drupal
 Version:      4.6.0
 Component:    upload.module
 Category:     feature requests
 Priority:     normal
 Assigned to:  Steven
 Reported by:  Steven
 Updated by:   Steven
 Status:       patch (code needs review)
 Attachment:   http://drupal.org/files/issues/jsupload.patch (14.71 KB)

This patch adds JavaScript-based inline uploading (screenshot [1]).


It does this by redirecting the submission of the form to a hidden
<iframe> when you click "Attach" (we cannot submit data through Ajax
directly because you cannot read file contents from JS for security
reasons).
Once the file is submitted, the upload-section of the form is updated.


Things to note:



* The feature degrades back to the current behaviour without JS.
* If there are errors with the uploaded file (disallowed type, too big,
...), they are displayed at the top of the file attachments fieldset.
* Though the hidden-iframe method sounds dirty, it's quite compact and
is 100% implemented in .js files. The drupal.js api makes it a snap to
use.
* I included some minor improvements to the Drupal JS API and code.
* I added an API drupal_call_js() to bridge the PHP/JS gap: it takes a
function name and arguments, and outputs a <script> tag. The kicker is
that it preserves the structure and type of arguments, so e.g. PHP
associative arrays end up as objects in JS.
* I also included a progressbar widget [2] that I wrote for drumm's
ongoing update.php work. It includes Ajax status updating/monitoring,
but it is only used as a pure throbber in this patch. But as the code
was already written and is going to be used in the near future, I left
that part in. It's pretty small ;). If PHP supports ad-hoc upload info
in the future like Ruby on Rails, we can implement that in 5 minutes.

[1] http://www.acko.net/dumpx/jsupload.png
[2] http://www.acko.net/yay-progress




Steven