jQuery equivalent to XMLHttpRequest's upload?

Question

Working with HTML5's File API, the upload is made via an object called upload in the XMLHttpRequest. This is the tutorial I'm working with (and the Google cache mirror since it's down at the moment). This is the relevant part:

// Uploading - for Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari
xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();

// Update progress bar
xhr.upload.addEventListener("progress", function (evt) {

As you can see, to track the upload progress, the XMLHttpRequest object has a property named upload, which we can add an event handler.

My question is: has jQuery an equivalent?. I'm attempting to leave the code as clean as and cross-browser compatible as possible, for whenever Microsoft thinks it's a good idea (although it sounds like it will be in 2012 or 2013).

Answer 1

Here is what I came up with to get around the issue. The $.ajax() call allows to provide a callback to generate the XHR. I just generate one before calling the request, set it up and then create a closure to return it when $.ajax() will need it. It would have been much easier if they just gave access to it through jqxhr, but they don't.

var reader = new FileReader();

reader.onloadend = function (e) {
    var xhr, provider;

    xhr = jQuery.ajaxSettings.xhr();
    if (xhr.upload) {
        xhr.upload.addEventListener('progress', function (e) {
            // ...
        }, false);
    }   
    provider = function () {
        return xhr;
    };  

    // Leave only the actual base64 component of the 'URL'
    // Sending as binary ends up mangling the data somehow
    // base64_decode() on the PHP side will return the valid file.
    var data = e.target.result;
    data = data.substr(data.indexOf('base64') + 7); 

    $.ajax({
        type: 'POST',
        url: 'http://example.com/upload.php',
        xhr: provider,
        dataType: 'json',
        success: function (data) {
            // ...
        },  
        error: function () {
            // ...
        },  
        data: {
            name: file.name,
            size: file.size,
            type: file.type,
            data: data,
        }   
    }); 
};  
reader.readAsDataURL(file);