Bleh. I know this has probably been stated before, but as I'm coming up to
it again it's Frustration City all anew. I'm surprised to find so little
talk about the (in)capabilities of this highly-touted feature of Flash 8.
Hooray! We can finally do file uploads from Flash! ..in a broken, not quite
usable kinda way.
Here are my four main qualms with the state of File Upload in Flash:
1. Inability to combine file uploading with any other form data
It could be useful to be able to include, say, a description of the
file being uploaded. Or user credentials for the person doing the uploading.
There is a mostly-workable workaround for this (see #2). However, it does
obviously limit your ability to send data.
2. Inability to authenticate.
The *only* work-around to this incredible folly is to put user
credentials (or other form data) into the query string (ala
"/upload?user=something&pass=else"). Query strings are limited to, what,
1024 characters (or was it even shorter)?
3. You can select multiple files to upload but you have to upload each
FileReference instance individually
This is relatively minor, but combined with the other points on this
list it becomes a problem when you're trying to track an uploaded file
(especially since you get.)
4. No return values from the upload submission
For example, it might be useful to get the URL of the file you just
uploaded. I assume that most services that allow for uploading of files
don't just throw everything in one place with the original filename. Most
rename the file with a unique name to avoid conflicts and shuffle it off to
another directory. I cannot figure out how to upload a file and, getting no
response from the server, find it afterwards (without trickery). Truly
remarkable.
5. It appears that Flash establishes a new session
Now, I could be wrong on this one (or all of them, hopefully), but
if I'm not then even if you manage to authenticate a user before the file
upload, you're out of luck. Flash appears to use a different session than
the browser.
6. Broken header (missing an \r\n)
7. Weird, zero-length "test post" for files over 10k.
So, it seems, except for the most trivial uses, Flash's File Upload
capability is relegated to the "bells & whistles" corner and it's back to
javascript-controlled hidden frame file uploads (at least without doing some
intricate work-arounds).
Please, if you have any information that contradicts this rant, do share it.
I would be incredibly excited to be shown my errors - I just want File
Upload to work like it should! Obviously some people *do* use it
(Bubbleshare, for example). So. Bleh.
Thanks,
Dave Myron
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