Convert text to file and send to server

Coding Help
1

I want to make an API that can receive large amounts of data and am using packages like https://www.npmjs.com/package/express-fileupload
Is it possible to convert form data into a file and then send it to the server?

2

You just include the data you want to send in a request body, you can encode the data any way you want, the easiest way to encode the data would probably be using JSON, YAML or any other text encoding/decoding definitions.

However, if you’re a power user you might want to look into sending binary data using the UInt8Array object.

This is essentially the same as file uploads, although when a file-upload is performed the browser will read the file you want to upload and take all of that content into a request body for you.

1 Like
3

Yeah, I thought so - I did some research about the data URI. Is there a way to compress and send an Array length 10,000 into a url like /api/:data?

4

Perhaps not in the URL. however, you should be able to have an endpoint similar to something like /api/do-something. What is the kind of data you want to send to the server? Is it user-input, is the input fixed or dynamic?

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5

It would be user-input - I at first wanted to be able to send everything to an API without any client-side code, but I’m starting to think that would be very difficult.

6

Is the input fixed? What sort of inputs are you sending, if the input isn’t fixed, or dynamically fixed I recommend just using JSON and send the data in a post request:

await fetch("/api/do-something", {
  method: "POST",
  body: JSON.stringify(data),
  headers: {
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
    "Accepts": "application/json"
  }
});

If the input is fixed I recommend converting the data to binary to save space.

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7

The input would be user-defined - they would be able to do something like fetch("api.mysite/api/4ja6c6f6g6b7c7273747").then(do something).
The max length of a URl is 2048 chars - could work :thinking:

8

What I mean by whether the input is fixed is if there’s a specific definition on the user-input.

For instance, how the object looks like, and the property rules.

If I have to make an example on this I’d say a login/register form.

I’ve recently myself started turning form data into binary data using js, I’d separate the login name and password using character \000 and just sent it in a UInt8Array.

1 Like
9

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