Question

This plugin allows you to upload and download files.

This plugin defines global FileTransfer, FileUploadOptions constructors. Although in the global scope, they are not available until after the deviceready event.

document.addEventListener("deviceready", onDeviceReady, false);
function onDeviceReady() {
    console.log(FileTransfer);
}

Report issues with this plugin on the Apache Cordova issue tracker

Installation

cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-file-transfer

Supported Platforms

• Amazon Fire OS
• Android
• BlackBerry 10
• Browser
• Firefox OS**
• iOS
• Windows Phone 7 and 8*
• Windows

* Do not support onprogress nor abort()

** Do not support onprogress

The FileTransfer object provides a way to upload files using an HTTP multi-part POST or PUT request, and to download files.

Properties

• onprogress: Called with a ProgressEvent whenever a new chunk of data is transferred. (Function)

Methods

• upload: Sends a file to a server.

• download: Downloads a file from server.

• abort: Aborts an in-progress transfer.

upload

Parameters:

• fileURL: Filesystem URL representing the file on the device or a data URI. For backwards compatibility, this can also be the full path of the file on the device. (See Backwards Compatibility Notes below)

• server: URL of the server to receive the file, as encoded by encodeURI().

• successCallback: A callback that is passed a FileUploadResult object. (Function)

• errorCallback: A callback that executes if an error occurs retrieving the FileUploadResult. Invoked with a FileTransferError object. (Function)

• options: Optional parameters (Object). Valid keys:

  • fileKey: The name of the form element. Defaults to file. (DOMString)
  • fileName: The file name to use when saving the file on the server. Defaults to image.jpg. (DOMString)
  • httpMethod: The HTTP method to use - either PUT or POST. Defaults to POST. (DOMString)
  • mimeType: The mime type of the data to upload. Defaults to image/jpeg. (DOMString)
  • params: A set of optional key/value pairs to pass in the HTTP request. (Object, key/value - DOMString)
  • chunkedMode: Whether to upload the data in chunked streaming mode. Defaults to true. (Boolean)
  • headers: A map of header name/header values. Use an array to specify more than one value. On iOS, FireOS, and Android, if a header named Content-Type is present, multipart form data will NOT be used. (Object)

• trustAllHosts: Optional parameter, defaults to false. If set to true, it accepts all security certificates. This is useful since Android rejects self-signed security certificates. Not recommended for production use. Supported on Android and iOS. (boolean)

Example

// !! Assumes variable fileURL contains a valid URL to a text file on the device,
//    for example, cdvfile://localhost/persistent/path/to/file.txt

var win = function (r) {
    console.log("Code = " + r.responseCode);
    console.log("Response = " + r.response);
    console.log("Sent = " + r.bytesSent);
}

var fail = function (error) {
    alert("An error has occurred: Code = " + error.code);
    console.log("upload error source " + error.source);
    console.log("upload error target " + error.target);
}

var options = new FileUploadOptions();
options.fileKey = "file";
options.fileName = fileURL.substr(fileURL.lastIndexOf('/') + 1);
options.mimeType = "text/plain";

var params = {};
params.value1 = "test";
params.value2 = "param";

options.params = params;

var ft = new FileTransfer();
ft.upload(fileURL, encodeURI("http://some.server.com/upload.php"), win, fail, options);

Example with Upload Headers and Progress Events (Android and iOS only)

function win(r) {
    console.log("Code = " + r.responseCode);
    console.log("Response = " + r.response);
    console.log("Sent = " + r.bytesSent);
}

function fail(error) {
    alert("An error has occurred: Code = " + error.code);
    console.log("upload error source " + error.source);
    console.log("upload error target " + error.target);
}

var uri = encodeURI("http://some.server.com/upload.php");

var options = new FileUploadOptions();
options.fileKey="file";
options.fileName=fileURL.substr(fileURL.lastIndexOf('/')+1);
options.mimeType="text/plain";

var headers={'headerParam':'headerValue'};

options.headers = headers;

var ft = new FileTransfer();
ft.onprogress = function(progressEvent) {
    if (progressEvent.lengthComputable) {
      loadingStatus.setPercentage(progressEvent.loaded / progressEvent.total);
    } else {
      loadingStatus.increment();
    }
};
ft.upload(fileURL, uri, win, fail, options);

FileUploadResult

A FileUploadResult object is passed to the success callback of the FileTransfer object's upload() method.

Properties

• bytesSent: The number of bytes sent to the server as part of the upload. (long)

• responseCode: The HTTP response code returned by the server. (long)

• response: The HTTP response returned by the server. (DOMString)

• headers: The HTTP response headers by the server. (Object)

  • Currently supported on iOS only.

iOS Quirks

• Does not support responseCode or bytesSent.

Browser Quirks

• withCredentials: boolean that tells the browser to set the withCredentials flag on the XMLHttpRequest

Windows Quirks

• An option parameter with empty/null value is excluded in the upload operation due to the Windows API design.

download

Parameters:

• source: URL of the server to download the file, as encoded by encodeURI().

• target: Filesystem url representing the file on the device. For backwards compatibility, this can also be the full path of the file on the device. (See Backwards Compatibility Notes below)

• successCallback: A callback that is passed a FileEntry object. (Function)

• errorCallback: A callback that executes if an error occurs when retrieving the FileEntry. Invoked with a FileTransferError object. (Function)

• trustAllHosts: Optional parameter, defaults to false. If set to true, it accepts all security certificates. This is useful because Android rejects self-signed security certificates. Not recommended for production use. Supported on Android and iOS. (boolean)

• options: Optional parameters, currently only supports headers (such as Authorization (Basic Authentication), etc).

Example

// !! Assumes variable fileURL contains a valid URL to a path on the device,
//    for example, cdvfile://localhost/persistent/path/to/downloads/

var fileTransfer = new FileTransfer();
var uri = encodeURI("http://some.server.com/download.php");

fileTransfer.download(
    uri,
    fileURL,
    function(entry) {
        console.log("download complete: " + entry.toURL());
    },
    function(error) {
        console.log("download error source " + error.source);
        console.log("download error target " + error.target);
        console.log("upload error code" + error.code);
    },
    false,
    {
        headers: {
            "Authorization": "Basic dGVzdHVzZXJuYW1lOnRlc3RwYXNzd29yZA=="
        }
    }
);

WP8 Quirks

• Download requests is being cached by native implementation. To avoid caching, pass if-Modified-Since header to download method.

Browser Quirks

• withCredentials: boolean that tells the browser to set the withCredentials flag on the XMLHttpRequest

abort

Aborts an in-progress transfer. The onerror callback is passed a FileTransferError object which has an error code of FileTransferError.ABORT_ERR.

Example

// !! Assumes variable fileURL contains a valid URL to a text file on the device,
//    for example, cdvfile://localhost/persistent/path/to/file.txt

var win = function(r) {
    console.log("Should not be called.");
}

var fail = function(error) {
    // error.code == FileTransferError.ABORT_ERR
    alert("An error has occurred: Code = " + error.code);
    console.log("upload error source " + error.source);
    console.log("upload error target " + error.target);
}

var options = new FileUploadOptions();
options.fileKey="file";
options.fileName="myphoto.jpg";
options.mimeType="image/jpeg";

var ft = new FileTransfer();
ft.upload(fileURL, encodeURI("http://some.server.com/upload.php"), win, fail, options);
ft.abort();

FileTransferError

A FileTransferError object is passed to an error callback when an error occurs.

Properties

• code: One of the predefined error codes listed below. (Number)

• source: URL to the source. (String)

• target: URL to the target. (String)

• http_status: HTTP status code. This attribute is only available when a response code is received from the HTTP connection. (Number)

• body Response body. This attribute is only available when a response is received from the HTTP connection. (String)

• exception: Either e.getMessage or e.toString (String)

Constants

• 1 = FileTransferError.FILE_NOT_FOUND_ERR
• 2 = FileTransferError.INVALID_URL_ERR
• 3 = FileTransferError.CONNECTION_ERR
• 4 = FileTransferError.ABORT_ERR
• 5 = FileTransferError.NOT_MODIFIED_ERR

Windows Quirks

• The plugin implementation is based on BackgroundDownloader/BackgroundUploader, which entails the latency issues on Windows devices (creation/starting of an operation can take up to a few seconds). You can use XHR or HttpClient as a quicker alternative for small downloads.

Backwards Compatibility Notes

Previous versions of this plugin would only accept device-absolute-file-paths as the source for uploads, or as the target for downloads. These paths would typically be of the form:

/var/mobile/Applications/<application UUID>/Documents/path/to/file  (iOS)
/storage/emulated/0/path/to/file                                    (Android)

For backwards compatibility, these paths are still accepted, and if your application has recorded paths like these in persistent storage, then they can continue to be used.

These paths were previously exposed in the fullPath property of FileEntry and DirectoryEntry objects returned by the File plugin. New versions of the File plugin however, no longer expose these paths to JavaScript.

If you are upgrading to a new (1.0.0 or newer) version of File, and you have previously been using entry.fullPath as arguments to download() or upload(), then you will need to change your code to use filesystem URLs instead.

FileEntry.toURL() and DirectoryEntry.toURL() return a filesystem URL of the form:

cdvfile://localhost/persistent/path/to/file

which can be used in place of the absolute file path in both download() and upload() methods.