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README.md |
formidable
A Node.js module for parsing form data, especially file uploads.
Important Notes
- This README is for the upcoming (end of February) v2 release!
- Every version prior and including
v1.2.2
is deprecated, please upgrade! - Install with
formidable@canary
until v2 land officially inlatest
- see more about the changes in the CHANGELOG.md
If you have any how-to kind of questions, please read the Contributing
Guide and Code of Conduct
documents.
For bugs reports and feature requests, please create an
issue or ping @tunnckoCore
at Twitter.
This project is semantically versioned and available as part of the Tidelift Subscription for professional grade assurances, enhanced support and security. Learn more.
The maintainers of formidable
and thousands of other packages are working
with Tidelift to deliver commercial support and maintenance for the Open Source
dependencies you use to build your applications. Save time, reduce risk, and
improve code health, while paying the maintainers of the exact dependencies you
use.
Status: Maintained
This module was initially developed by @felixge for Transloadit, a service focused on uploading and encoding images and videos. It has been battle-tested against hundreds of GBs of file uploads from a large variety of clients and is considered production-ready and is used in production for years.
Currently, we are few maintainers trying to deal with it. :) More contributors are always welcome! ❤️ Jump on issue #412 which is closed, but if you are interested we can discuss it and add you after strict rules, like enabling Two-Factor Auth in your npm and GitHub accounts.
Note: The github master
branch is a "canary" branch - try it with npm i formidable@canary
.
Do not expect (for now) things from it to be inside thelatest
"dist-tag" in the
Npm. Theformidable@latest
is thev1.2.1
version and probably it will be the
lastv1
release!
Note: v2 is coming soon!
Highlights
- Fast (~900-2500 mb/sec) & streaming multipart parser
- Automatically writing file uploads to disk (soon optionally)
- Plugins API - allowing custom parsers and plugins
- Low memory footprint
- Graceful error handling
- Very high test coverage
Install
This project requires Node.js >= 10.13
. Install it using
yarn or npm.
We highly
recommend to use Yarn when you think to contribute to this project.
npm install formidable
# or the canary version
npm install formidable@canary
or with Yarn v1/v2
yarn add formidable
# or the canary version
yarn add formidable@canary
This is a low-level package, and if you're using a high-level framework it may
already be included. Check the examples below and the examples/
folder.
Examples
For more examples look at the examples/
directory.
with Node.js http module
Parse an incoming file upload, with the
Node.js's built-in http
module.
const http = require('http');
const formidable = require('formidable');
const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
if (req.url === '/api/upload' && req.method.toLowerCase() === 'post') {
// parse a file upload
const form = formidable({ multiples: true });
form.parse(req, (err, fields, files) => {
res.writeHead(200, { 'content-type': 'application/json' });
res.end(JSON.stringify({ fields, files }, null, 2));
});
return;
}
// show a file upload form
res.writeHead(200, { 'content-type': 'text/html' });
res.end(`
<h2>With Node.js <code>"http"</code> module</h2>
<form action="/api/upload" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">
<div>Text field title: <input type="text" name="title" /></div>
<div>File: <input type="file" name="multipleFiles" multiple="multiple" /></div>
<input type="submit" value="Upload" />
</form>
`);
});
server.listen(8080, () => {
console.log('Server listening on http://localhost:8080/ ...');
});
with Express.js
There are multiple variants to do this, but Formidable just need Node.js Request stream, so something like the following example should work just fine, without any third-party Express.js middleware.
Or try the examples/with-express.js
const express = require('express');
const formidable = require('formidable');
const app = express();
app.get('/', (req, res) => {
res.send(`
<h2>With <code>"express"</code> npm package</h2>
<form action="/api/upload" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">
<div>Text field title: <input type="text" name="title" /></div>
<div>File: <input type="file" name="someExpressFiles" multiple="multiple" /></div>
<input type="submit" value="Upload" />
</form>
`);
});
app.post('/api/upload', (req, res, next) => {
const form = formidable({ multiples: true });
form.parse(req, (err, fields, files) => {
if (err) {
next(err);
return;
}
res.json({ fields, files });
});
});
app.listen(3000, () => {
console.log('Server listening on http://localhost:3000 ...');
});
with Koa and Formidable
Of course, with Koa v1, v2 or future v3 the things
are very similar. You can use formidable
manually as shown below or through
the koa-better-body package which is
using formidable
under the hood and support more features and different
request bodies, check its documentation for more info.
Note: this example is assuming Koa v2. Be aware that you should pass ctx.req
which is Node.js's Request, and NOT the ctx.request
which is Koa's Request
object - there is a difference.
const Koa = require('koa');
const formidable = require('formidable');
const app = new Koa();
app.on('error', (err) => {
console.error('server error', err);
});
app.use(async (ctx, next) => {
if (ctx.url === '/api/upload' && ctx.method.toLowerCase() === 'post') {
const form = formidable({ multiples: true });
// not very elegant, but that's for now if you don't want touse `koa-better-body`
// or other middlewares.
await new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
form.parse(ctx.req, (err, fields, files) => {
if (err) {
reject(err);
return;
}
ctx.set('Content-Type', 'application/json');
ctx.status = 200;
ctx.state = { fields, files };
ctx.body = JSON.stringify(ctx.state, null, 2);
resolve();
});
});
await next();
return;
}
// show a file upload form
ctx.set('Content-Type', 'text/html');
ctx.status = 200;
ctx.body = `
<h2>With <code>"koa"</code> npm package</h2>
<form action="/api/upload" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">
<div>Text field title: <input type="text" name="title" /></div>
<div>File: <input type="file" name="koaFiles" multiple="multiple" /></div>
<input type="submit" value="Upload" />
</form>
`;
});
app.use((ctx) => {
console.log('The next middleware is called');
console.log('Results:', ctx.state);
});
app.listen(3000, () => {
console.log('Server listening on http://localhost:3000 ...');
});
Benchmarks (for v2)
The benchmark is quite old, from the old codebase. But maybe quite true though. Previously the numbers was around ~500 mb/sec. Currently with moving to the new Node.js Streams API it's faster. You can clearly see the differences between the Node versions.
Note: a lot better benchmarking could and should be done in future.
Benchmarked on 8GB RAM, Xeon X3440 (2.53 GHz, 4 cores, 8 threads)
~/github/node-formidable master
❯ nve --parallel 8 10 12 13 node benchmark/bench-multipart-parser.js
⬢ Node 8
1261.08 mb/sec
⬢ Node 10
1113.04 mb/sec
⬢ Node 12
2107.00 mb/sec
⬢ Node 13
2566.42 mb/sec
API
Formidable / IncomingForm
All shown are equivalent.
Please pass options
to the function/constructor, not by assigning
them to the instance form
const formidable = require('formidable');
const form = formidable(options);
// or
const { formidable } = require('formidable');
const form = formidable(options);
// or
const { IncomingForm } = require('formidable');
const form = new IncomingForm(options);
// or
const { Formidable } = require('formidable');
const form = new Formidable(options);
Options
See it's defaults in src/Formidable.js (the
DEFAULT_OPTIONS
constant).
options.encoding
{string} - default'utf-8'
; sets encoding for incoming form fields,options.uploadDir
{string} - defaultos.tmpdir()
; the directory for placing file uploads in. You can move them later by usingfs.rename()
options.keepExtensions
{boolean} - defaultfalse
; to include the extensions of the original files or notoptions.maxFileSize
{number} - default200 * 1024 * 1024
(200mb); limit the size of uploaded file.options.maxFields
{number} - default1000
; limit the number of fields that the Querystring parser will decode, set 0 for unlimitedoptions.maxFieldsSize
{number} - default20 * 1024 * 1024
(20mb); limit the amount of memory all fields together (except files) can allocate in bytes.options.hash
{boolean} - defaultfalse
; include checksums calculated for incoming files, set this to some hash algorithm, see crypto.createHash for available algorithmsoptions.multiples
{boolean} - defaultfalse
; when you call the.parse
method, thefiles
argument (of the callback) will contain arrays of files for inputs which submit multiple files using the HTML5multiple
attribute. Also, thefields
argument will contain arrays of values for fields that have names ending with '[]'.
Note: If this size of combined fields, or size of some file is exceeded, an
'error'
event is fired.
// The amount of bytes received for this form so far.
form.bytesReceived;
// The expected number of bytes in this form.
form.bytesExpected;
.parse(request, callback)
Parses an incoming Node.js request
containing form data. If callback
is
provided, all fields and files are collected and passed to the callback.
const formidable = require('formidable');
const form = formidable({ multiples: true, uploadDir: __dirname });
form.parse(req, (err, fields, files) => {
console.log('fields:', fields);
console.log('files:', files);
});
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.
In the example below, we listen on couple of events and direct them to the
data
listener, so you can do whatever you choose there, based on whether its
before the file been emitted, the header value, the header name, on field, on
file and etc.
Or the other way could be to just override the form.onPart
as it's shown a bit
later.
form.once('error', console.error);
form.on('fileBegin', (filename, file) => {
form.emit('data', { name: 'fileBegin', filename, value: file });
});
form.on('file', (filename, file) => {
form.emit('data', { name: 'file', key: filename, value: file });
});
form.on('field', (fieldName, fieldValue) => {
form.emit('data', { name: 'field', key: fieldName, value: fieldValue });
});
form.once('end', () => {
console.log('Done!');
});
// If you want to customize whatever you want...
form.on('data', ({ name, key, value, buffer, start, end, ...more }) => {
if (name === 'partBegin') {
}
if (name === 'partData') {
}
if (name === 'headerField') {
}
if (name === 'headerValue') {
}
if (name === 'headerEnd') {
}
if (name === 'headersEnd') {
}
if (name === 'field') {
console.log('field name:', key);
console.log('field value:', value);
}
if (name === 'file') {
console.log('file:', key, value);
}
if (name === 'fileBegin') {
console.log('fileBegin:', key, value);
}
});
.use(plugin: Plugin)
A method that allows you to extend the Formidable library. By default we include 4 plugins, which esentially are adapters to plug the different built-in parsers.
The plugins added by this method are always enabled.
See src/plugins/ for more detailed look on default plugins.
The plugin
param has such signature:
function(formidable: Formidable, options: Options): void;
The architecture is simple. The plugin
is a function that is passed with the
Formidable instance (the form
across the README examples) and the options.
Note: the plugin function's this
context is also the same instance.
const formidable = require('formidable');
const form = formidable({ keepExtensions: true });
form.use((self, options) => {
// self === this === form
console.log('woohoo, custom plugin');
// do your stuff; check `src/plugins` for inspiration
});
form.parse(req, (error, fields, files) => {
console.log('done!');
});
Important to note, is that inside plugin this.options
, self.options
and
options
MAY or MAY NOT be the same. General best practice is to always use the
this
, so you can later test your plugin independently and more easily.
If you want to disable some parsing capabilities of Formidable, you can disable
the plugin which corresponds to the parser. For example, if you want to disable
multipart parsing (so the src/parsers/Multipart.js
which is used in src/plugins/multipart.js), then
you can remove it from the options.enabledPlugins
, like so
const { Formidable } = require('formidable');
const form = new Formidable({
hash: 'sha1',
enabledPlugins: ['octetstream', 'querystring', 'json'],
});
Be aware that the order MAY be important too. The names corresponds 1:1 to files in src/plugins/ folder.
Pull requests for new built-in plugins MAY be accepted - for example, more
advanced querystring parser. Add your plugin as a new file in src/plugins/
folder (lowercased) and follow how the other plugins are made.
form.onPart
If you want to use Formidable to only handle certain parts for you, you can do something similar. Or see #387 for inspiration, you can for example validate the mime-type.
const form = formidable();
form.onPart = (part) => {
part.on('data', (buffer) {
// do whatever you want here
});
};
For example, force Formidable to be used only on non-file "parts" (i.e., html fields)
const form = formidable();
form.onPart = function(part) {
// let formidable handle only non-file parts
if (part.filename === '' || !part.mime) {
// used internally, please do not override!
form.handlePart(part);
}
};
File
export interface File {
// 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.
file.size: number;
// 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.
file.path: string;
// The name this file had according to the uploading client.
file.name: string | null;
// The mime type of this file, according to the uploading client.
file.type: string | 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/).
file.lastModifiedDate: Date | null;
// If `options.hash` calculation was set, you can read the hex digest out of this var.
file.hash: string | 'sha1' | 'md5' | 'sha256' | null;
}
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.
form.on('progress', (bytesReceived, bytesExpected) => {});
'field'
Emitted whenever a field / value pair has been received.
form.on('field', (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.
form.on('fileBegin', (name, file) => {});
'file'
Emitted whenever a field / file pair has been received. file
is an instance of
File
.
form.on('file', (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.
form.on('error', (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).
form.on('aborted', () => {});
'end'
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.
form.on('end', () => {});
Ports & Credits
- multipart-parser: a C++ parser based on formidable
- Ryan Dahl for his work on
http-parser which heavily inspired the
initial
multipart_parser.js
.
Contributing
If the documentation is unclear or has a typo, please click on the page's Edit
button (pencil icon) and suggest a correction. If you would like to help us fix
a bug or add a new feature, please check our
Contributing Guide. Pull requests are welcome!
Thanks goes to these wonderful people (emoji key):
License
Formidable is licensed under the MIT License.