HTTP File Upload Introduction Files can be transferred from your local computer to a web server via serveral means. One is standard FTP (File Transfer Protocol). FTP requires an FTP application on your local computer and an FTP server on the machine you are transferring files to. To accomplish the same task you can use HTTP file upload. Rather than transferring files from your local machine to a server using an FTP application, you transfer files using your browser and MGI places those files in a designated location on the web server. HTTP file uploads are preferable for clients who do not know how to use FTP, anonymous file uploads, group projects, etc. Using MGI's HTTP file upload, you may specify which files to accept and deny all others to keep your web site secure. Access to HTTP file upload and a specified upload location must be configured in the Domain Admin on a region basis. In this example, configure a region to upload files to a folder on the server named "images". MGI Tags None - HTTP File Upload is configured in the Domain Admin. Steps Configure the region for file upload. Create a file upload form. Create an upload results page and open it in a text editor. Insert the mgiPostArgument tag. Save the upload results page. FTP the file upload form and upload results page to the web server running MGI. View the file upload form. Step 1: Configure the region for file upload. Access the domain admin page for the domain where files will be uploaded.   To access the domain admin page, access the "MGIDomainAdmin.xxx" page in a web browser from one of the domain's virtual host addresses. Replace the ".xxx" suffix with any suffix that is mapped to be processed by MGI2. For example, if you have the ".mgi" extension mapped to be processed by MGI2 you would access "MGIDomainAdmin.mgi" or if you have the ".html" extension mapped to be processed by MGI2, you would access "MGIDomainAdmin.html".   The domain admin page is password-protected. When a domain is created, the domain admin username and password are those of the current server admin and password.   Click the "Region Management" link. Select the region to configure for file upload. Highlight the forward slash "/" for the default region or the region name in the region list and click the "Edit" button. In the file upload section, enter the maximum file size, path information, and regular expressions for authorized files.   By default, a file of any size can be uploaded. To limit the size of uploaded files, enter the maximum file size in kilobytes. Remember, a megabyte is 1024 kilobytes!   By default, files are uploaded to the root of the region. To specify a different folder, enter the path to the folder relative to the selected region. The folder path must be below the level of the selected region. If a folder does not exist, MGI will create it automatically. For this example, files will be saved in the "images" folder.   By default, all files that you try to upload are denied. Enter regular expressions that match authorized file names. The uploaded file name will be checked against the regular expressions until a match is found or until all expressions have been checked. Files that are not authorized for upload will be deleted and will not be written to the server. To allow any file to be uploaded, enter a single period (.) in the regular expression box. See the regular expression reference for more information and examples. For this example, only files ending with .jpg, .jpeg, or .gif will uploaded to the images folder.   By default, all IP addresses that attempt to upload files are denied access. To allow or deny an IP address, enter an IP filter in the "IP filter list". To allow an IP address, enter an "A" followed by a colon and the allowed IP address (e.g., "a:198.2.152.111"). To deny an IP address, enter a "D" followed by a colon and the denied IP address (e.g., "d:198.3.145.200"). You may use an asterisk (*) for a wildcard value in any position of the IP address. A wildcard value allows you to match of range of IP addresses. For example, to allow all IP addresses from the 198 Class C block you would enter "a:198.*.*.*" in the IP filter list. For multiple filters, enter one filter per line. When a file upload request is received, the most restrictive match for the IP address will be processed and if two filters match, a deny filter will override an accept filter. For example, if you wish to allow all IPs from the 198.3.145 address except the IP address "198.3.145.201", then you would enter an allow and deny statement in the IP filter list ("a:198.3.145.*" and "d:198.3.145.201"). To allow all IP addresses, use wildcard values for all positions (i.e., "*.*.*.*").   Click the "Save" button to save the region preferences including the file upload preferences. Step 2: Create a file upload form. Create a form named "upload.mgi" to select and enter the file to upload. The file upload form field may be combined with any other type of form fields, however the form method must be post and the form encoding type must be "multipart/form-data".   Enter an HTML input tag, type parameter and name parameter. In the type parameter, enter "file". In the name parameter, enter the name of the post argument for the file upload. The post argument can be checked on the results page to determine if the file had to be renamed or to determine if there was an error uploading the file. A file input creates a text field with a "Browse" button.   Enter a submit button with the value "Submit Image".   Enclose all form elements with HTML <FORM> tags. The form method must be "Post" (posted to the "results.mgi" page in this example) and the form encoding type (ENCTYPE) must be "multipart/form-data".   The following example is an image upload page <FORM ACTION="results.mgi" METHOD="POST" ENCTYPE="multipart/form-data"> <CENTER> <H3>Image Upload</H3> <P>Enter the image file to upload or click the "Browse" button to locate and select the image file from your hard drive.</P> <input type="file" name="imageFile"> <mgiButton value="Submit Image"> </CENTER> </FORM> The form in this example would display the following. Step 3: Create an upload results page and open it in a text editor. Create a page named "results.mgi" to display the results of the file upload. Open the upload results page in a text editing program that allows you to view and modify the HTML and code of the page. Step 4: Insert the mgiPostArgument tag. When a file is successfully uploaded, the final file name can be displayed with the mgiPostArgument tag. If an upload file name is a duplicate of an existing file name, the new file name is appended with a number before the final period (i.e., before the file extension).   If an error occurs while uploading a file, the post argument will be empty (i.e., not exist). An error may occur if the file exceeds the maximum file size or does not match any of the specified regular expressions.   Check the post argument with a conditional and display the results if the post argument is not empty.   In this example, the post argument is named "imageFile". <mgiIf lhs={mgiPostArgument name="imageFile"} relationship="isNotEmpty"> <P>Your file has been uploaded. The file name for your upload is <mgiPostArgument name="imageFile">. <mgiElse> <p>An error has occurred during your file upload. Please make sure that the file is an image that ends with .jpg, .jpeg or .gif. The file size should not exceed 15 MB. </mgiIf> Step 5: Save the upload results page. Save the changes you have made to the upload results page. Step 6: FTP the file upload form and upload results page to the web server running MGI. Upload the file upload form and upload results page from your local computer to the web server using an FTP program (at least until you implement the HTTP upload :). Step 7: View the file upload form. View the file upload form in a web browser. Enter the file name to upload or use the "browse" button to locate and select the file on your hard drive. Click the "Submit Image" button.