[whatwg] Directory upload via <input type="file" directory>
Diogo Resende
dresende at thinkdigital.pt
Wed Apr 7 02:46:41 PDT 2010
I don't understand. I think in a "Choose File" Dialog you can pick
multiple items. And as far as I know folders are mixed with files on the
list (that's how you navigate between folders on this dialog).
Why not choose multiple files/folders? Security doesn't seem to be a
concern. I can make a mess with only one folder.
On Tue, 2010-04-06 at 14:28 -0700, John Gregg wrote:
> The most relevant issue is that in Windows/Mac/Linux, there are no
> system dialogs that let the user select either a folder or a file.
> They each have separate "choose a file" and "choose a folder"
> dialogs. I think the logical reason for that is that when selecting a
> file, clicking a directory means to enter that directory and select
> from its files, not to choose that directory as the result of
> selection.
>
>
> Thus we would force UAs to reinvent file-picker interfaces in order to
> deal with an input element that allows both folders and files.
>
>
> -John
>
> On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 2:18 PM, Ojan Vafai <ojan at chromium.org> wrote:
> It's unfortunate that users need to distinguish between single
> and multiple file inputs. That's not something we can change
> at this point. The web started with single file inputs. We can
> avoid adding a third type of file input they need to
> understand though.
>
>
> Also, what should happen if you drag files and folders onto a
> "multiple" or "directory" input? Just drop the ones that are
> of the wrong type? I cannot imagine users making sense of
> that.
>
>
> It's not clear to me from your original email what issues you
> encountered during implementation that led to this proposal.
> Is it just the leaf name conflict issue? I agree that's a
> problem, but maybe there's a different solution to that?
>
>
> Ojan
>
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 12:53 PM, John Gregg
> <johnnyg at google.com> wrote:
> That's a fair question, but how is it clear today
> whether an input can accept multiple files vs. a
> single file using drag-and-drop? Currently if I drag
> multiple files onto an input that doesn't have
> 'multiple', I get only the first one. (In Chrome.)
>
>
> Some good default text from the UA, like "Choose
> folder..." instead of "Choose file...", would go far
> to solve that, I think.
>
>
> -John
>
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 12:38 PM, Ojan Vafai
> <ojan at chromium.org> wrote:
> What about drag-drop? I should be able to drag
> a directory, a file, or a list of files onto
> an input, no? If not, how is this distinction
> shown to users? How will it be clear to users
> when they can do one or the other?
>
>
> Ojan
>
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 3:53 PM, John Gregg
> <johnnyg at google.com> wrote:
> For context, Ian Fette started a
> thread about uploading directories of
> files in
> December: http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2009-December/024455.html
>
> At that time, it was thought that
> directory upload could be implemented
> by a UA in response to a <input
> type="file" multiple> tag using
> different UI only, and modifying the
> FileAPI spec to allow path information
> in the form
>
> input.files[0].name="1.jpg"
> input.files[0].path="a"
> input.files[1].name="2.jpg"
> input.files[1].path="a/b"
> input.files[2].name="3.jpg"
> input.files[2].path="a/c"
>
> I've started developing a prototype of
> this in WebKit/Chromium. Based on
> what I've encountered so far, I would
> like to propose adding directory
> upload functionality using an explicit
> new 'directory' attribute on the file
> input element.
>
>
> The existing behavior of <input
> type="file" multiple> would not
> change, but when processing <input
> type="file" directory>, the UA would
> display a directory selection UI and
> store the path information, and not
> allow individual files to be
> selected. It would allow multiple
> files to have the same leaf name
> (.name attribute), as long as the
> paths were different. The path
> attributes would include the name of
> the chosen directory
>
> This would be preferable for several
> reasons:
> - Most built-in file system UI on
> major platforms (Windows/Mac/Linux)
> have distinct dialogs for choosing
> files and choosing directories.
> Allowing the UA to use these directly
> makes sense rather than creating
> hybrids.
> - Avoiding "leaf name" conflicts in a
> directory tree is not feasible in many
> applications -- asking a user to
> ensure unique photo names in a large
> set of albums before uploading would
> fail to meet that use case. Therefore
> HTML documents should know in advance
> whether the path information will be
> relevant in the eventual storage of
> the files. Sites currently using
> <input type="file" multiple> would
> have compatibility problems with an
> implementation which allowed
> conflicting file names along different
> paths.
>
>
> What are your thoughts about adding
> the 'directory' attribute?
>
>
> Thanks,
> -John
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
--
Diogo Resende <dresende at thinkdigital.pt>
ThinkDigital
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