parsing a formdata object with javascript

Question

My company uses a propitiatory application server in which the server side programs are written in javascript (not node.js) . This is a very initial thing and support isn\'t

Answer 1

Best would be to use node-formidable, browserify and polyfill it. Here is a standalone parser, works both with string and raw responses. Make sure you use a modern browser for the raw-stuff.

/* 
 * MultiPart_parse decodes a multipart/form-data encoded response into a named-part-map.
 * The response can be a string or raw bytes.
 *
 * Usage for string response:
 *      var map = MultiPart_parse(xhr.responseText, xhr.getResponseHeader('Content-Type'));
 *
 * Usage for raw bytes:
 *      xhr.open(..);     
 *      xhr.responseType = "arraybuffer";
 *      ...
 *      var map = MultiPart_parse(xhr.response, xhr.getResponseHeader('Content-Type'));
 *
 * TODO: Can we use https://github.com/felixge/node-formidable
 * See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6965107/converting-between-strings-and-arraybuffers
 * See http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc1341/7_2_Multipart.html
 *
 * Copyright@ 2013-2014 Wolfgang Kuehn, released under the MIT license.
*/
function MultiPart_parse(body, contentType) {
    // Examples for content types:
    //      multipart/form-data; boundary="----7dd322351017c"; ...
    //      multipart/form-data; boundary=----7dd322351017c; ...
    var m = contentType.match(/boundary=(?:"([^"]+)"|([^;]+))/i);

    if ( !m ) {
        throw new Error('Bad content-type header, no multipart boundary');
    }

    var boundary = m[1] || m[2];

    function Header_parse(header) {
        var headerFields = {};
        var matchResult = header.match(/^.*name="([^"]*)"$/);
        if ( matchResult ) headerFields.name = matchResult[1];
        return headerFields;
    }

    function rawStringToBuffer( str ) {
        var idx, len = str.length, arr = new Array( len );
        for ( idx = 0 ; idx < len ; ++idx ) {
            arr[ idx ] = str.charCodeAt(idx) & 0xFF;
        }
        return new Uint8Array( arr ).buffer;
    }

    // \r\n is part of the boundary.
    var boundary = '\r\n--' + boundary;

    var isRaw = typeof(body) !== 'string';

    if ( isRaw ) {
        var view = new Uint8Array( body );
        s = String.fromCharCode.apply(null, view);
    } else {
        s = body;
    }

    // Prepend what has been stripped by the body parsing mechanism.
    s = '\r\n' + s;

    var parts = s.split(new RegExp(boundary)),
        partsByName = {};

    // First part is a preamble, last part is closing '--'
    for (var i=1; i