Question

Can someone provide code examples or documentation on implementing a form with a file field using EmberJS and Ember Data?

I’m familiar with Ember Data already but I’m not sure how to implement file-uploads correctly.

Answer 1

Here is part of an ember-data adapter I wrote to do file uploads (same server -not cross domain)

DS.DjangoRESTAdapter = DS.RESTAdapter.extend({
        bulkCommit: false,

        createRecord: function(store, type, record) {
            var root = this.rootForType(type), json = {};

            var data = new FormData();
            data.append('username', record.get('username'));
            data.append('attachment', record.get('attachment'));

            this.django_file_ajax('http://localhost:8000/people/new/', "POST", {
                data: data,
                context: this,
                success: function(pre_json) {
                    json[root] = pre_json;
                    this.didCreateRecord(store, type, record, json);
                }
            });
        },

        django_file_ajax: function(url, type, hash) {
            hash.url = url;
            hash.type = type;
            hash.contentType = false;
            hash.processData = false;
            hash.context = this;

            jQuery.ajax(hash);
        }

    });

})();

It’s not IE8 friendly as is because I’m using the “FormData” helper to do multipart file upload but it’s a good proof of concept.

Here is the ember-data model to go w/ the above adapter

PersonApp.Person = DS.Model.extend({
  id: DS.attr('number'),
  username: DS.attr('string'),
  attachment: DS.attr('string')
});

Here is the handlebars template

<script type="text/x-handlebars" data-template-name="person">
{{view PersonApp.UploadFileView name="logo_image" contentBinding="content"}}
</script>

Here is the custom ember view

PersonApp.PersonView = Ember.View.extend({
  templateName: 'person'
});

PersonApp.UploadFileView = Ember.TextField.extend({
    type: 'file',
    attributeBindings: ['name'],
    change: function(evt) {
      var self = this;
      var input = evt.target;
      if (input.files && input.files[0]) {
        var reader = new FileReader();
        var that = this;
        reader.onload = function(e) {
          var fileToUpload = e.srcElement.result;
          var person = PersonApp.Person.createRecord({ username: 'heyo', attachment: fileToUpload });
          self.get('controller.target').get('store').commit();
        }
        reader.readAsDataURL(input.files[0]);
      }
    }
});

If you want to see a full blown spike with this in action checkout a multi file upload example I did recently.

https://github.com/toranb/ember-file-upload