[whatwg] Directory upload via <input type="file" directory>

[Ashley Sheridan]

On Thu, 2010-04-22 at 15:37 -0700, John Gregg wrote:

> The use case is not about choosing a directory for some browser
> functionality, it is really about choosing a directory that you want
> to upload to a web page, such as a collection of photo albums.
> 
>  -John
> 
> >From Ian Fette's original email
> (http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2009-December/024455.html):
> 
> USE CASE:
> Many sites allow you to upload multiple files, often images. HTML5 allows
> this via <input type="file" multiple>. This works well when your files are
> all in one folder, but it may often be the case that files are spread across
> sub-folders, and in this case you have to do multiple transactions (or
> multiple <input type=file multiple> tags, which is just awkward) to upload
> your files.
> 
> On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 3:33 PM, Jonas Sicking <jonas at sicking.cc> wrote:
> > I still don't understand the use case.
> >
> > In all cases I can think of where applications allow me to pick a
> > folder (as opposed to a file), it's always been about choosing a
> > location to save files. For example choosing where to put the browsers
> > cache, or which should be the default download directory.
> >
> > Is that the use case? If so, it doesn't seem like <input type=file> is
> > even close to what you want.
> >
> > / Jonas
> >
> > On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 3:15 PM, John Gregg <johnnyg at google.com> wrote:
> >> So are you suggesting an input element that accepts directories
> >> dragged onto it, but has no way of choosing a directory through a
> >> system dialog?
> >>
> >>  -John
> >>
> >> On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 3:11 PM, Ojan Vafai <ojan at chromium.org> wrote:
> >>> But there is already a default UI that lets you select a folder, a file or
> >>> both (drag-drop). I don't see why this forces the UA to do anything. Just
> >>> because you can select both folders and files doesn't mean the UA needs to
> >>> expose extra UI on top of drag-drop to let you do so. Again, no more so than
> >>> they already have to expose extra UI to deal with multiple inputs.
> >>> Ojan
> >>>
> >>> On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 2:28 PM, John Gregg <johnnyg at google.com> 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
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >


I can't imagine many scenarios where someone would want to select
multiple files from different directories with one input element. I'd
just lose track of which files I might have selected if they weren't all
in the same directory.

Thanks,
Ash
http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk


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