Adele Peterson wrote:
I'm looking at the Web Forms 2 specification for the multi-file
upload control that uses the min/max attributes. When multiple files
are selected, its unclear what the value attribute should contain.
Assuming you're referring to the value DOM attribute, not the value=""
content attribute, It seems to be unclear what the value should contain
even when there's only a single file selected.
I did some testing to see what each returned. All tests use this markup
to obtain the value, using the Live DOM Viewer:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<input type="file" id="test" size=100>
<input type=button onclick="w(document.getElementById('test').value);"
value="Read Value...">
http://software.hixie.ch/utilities/js/live-dom-viewer/?%3C!DOCTYPE%20html%3E%0D%0A%3Cinput%20type%3D%22file%22%20id%3D%22test%22%20size%3D100%3E%0D%0A%3Cinput%20type%3Dbutton%20onclick%3D%22w(document.getElementById('test').value)%3B%22%20value%3D%22Read%20Value...%22%3E
In each one, I selected a file named test.txt from within my home or My
Documents directory. These are the vaules returned in each browser:
Windows browsers:
IE 8: test.txt
IE 7 mode: test.txt
Firefox 2: D:\My Documents\test.txt
Firefox 3: test.txt
Opera 9.5: C:\fake_path\test.txt
Safari 3.1.1: D:\My Documents\test.txt
Mac browsers:
Firefox 3: test.txt
Opera 9.5: C:\fake_path\test.txt
Safari 4 (Developer Preview): /Users/lachlanhunt/test.txt
It could contain just the first filename, or a comma separated list
of all of the filenames. I think it will be useful though to add
something about this in the specification for consistency.
Opera 9.5 supports multiple file selection when a max="" attribute is
set to a value greater than 1. It currently only returns the fake path
of the first file, as shown above. However, the control displays to the
user the real paths of all files selected as quoted strings separated by
semi-colons. e.g.
"/Users/lachlanhunt/test.txt";"/Users/lachlanhunt/other.txt"
Since Both Firefox 3 and IE 8 only return the file name, and Opera 9.5
refuses to return the real path anyway, maybe we should define that when
there's only a single file selected, it returns just the file name. When
there are multiple files selected, would a string containing the file
names, each surrounded by quotes and separated by semi-colons work?
e.g. "test.txt";"other.txt"
There's a small problem with that too, because we would need a way to
handle file names that contained quote marks, which is possible on Mac
and Linux, but not on Windows.
But it really depends what use cases we need to address. Do authors
ever actually obtain the file name using JavaScript for anything? If
so, what for? With multiple file selection, is it likely they would
want to inspect each individual file name for anything, in which case,
should we find a way to make it easier to obtain individual file names?
--
Lachlan Hunt - Opera Software
http://lachy.id.au/
http://www.opera.com/
