What does WebKitFormBoundary mean?

Question

I'm doing a file upload using https://github.com/danialfarid/ng-file-upload but I don't understand whether I'm actually sending the file or not. The payload just says:

------WebKitFormBoundaryaym16ehT29q60rUx
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="file"; filename="webfonts.zip"
Content-Type: application/zip


------WebKitFormBoundaryaym16ehT29q60rUx--

I don't understand what this means? It sort of looks like its being uploaded but the POST comes back instantly and I expected to see some sort of file stream. Whats going on, am I sending the file or not?

Answer 1

Each item in a multipart message is separated by a boundary marker. Webkit based browsers put "WebKitFormBoundary" in the name of that boundary.

The Network tab of developer tools do not show file data in a multipart message report: They can be too big.

Use a tool like Charles Proxy to watch the request instead if you want to monitor exactly what is in there.

Answer 2

That is the payload of the temporary image or document in post method. You can access the above code using php.

 <?php

  print_r($_FILES); // to print the file type params
  $target_dir = "/var/www/html/me_docs/";
  $date = date_create();
  $timestamp = date_timestamp_get($date);

  $filename = pathinfo($_FILES["filepond"]["name"],PATHINFO_FILENAME);
  $extension = pathinfo($_FILES["filepond"]["name"],PATHINFO_EXTENSION);
  $fullname = $filename.'_'.$timestamp.'.'.$extension; 

  $target_file_name = $target_dir.$fullname;

  if(move_uploaded_file($_FILES["filepond"]["tmp_name"], $target_file_name))
  {     
    echo "moving file success";
  }
  else
  {
    echo "failed moving file";
  }

I hope it is useful for someone, Thank you.