What is the boundary in multipart/form-data?

Question

I want to ask a question about the multipart/form-data. In the HTTP header, I find that the Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=???.

Answer 1

multipart/form-data contains boundary to separate name/value pairs. The boundary acts like a marker of each chunk of name/value pairs passed when a form gets submitted. The boundary is automatically added to a content-type of a request header.

The form with enctype="multipart/form-data" attribute will have a request header Content-Type : multipart/form-data; boundary --- WebKit193844043-h (browser generated vaue).

The payload passed looks something like this:

Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=---WebKitFormBoundary7MA4YWxkTrZu0gW

    -----WebKitFormBoundary7MA4YWxkTrZu0gW
    Content-Disposition: form-data; name=”file”; filename=”captcha”
    Content-Type:

    -----WebKitFormBoundary7MA4YWxkTrZu0gW
    Content-Disposition: form-data; name=”action”

    submit
    -----WebKitFormBoundary7MA4YWxkTrZu0gW--

On the webservice side, it's consumed in @Consumes("multipart/form-data") form.

Beware, when testing your webservice using chrome postman, you need to check the form data option(radio button) and File menu from the dropdown box to send attachment. Explicit provision of content-type as multipart/form-data throws an error. Because boundary is missing as it overrides the curl request of post man to server with content-type by appending the boundary which works fine.

See RFC1341 sec7.2 The Multipart Content-Type