Question

I need to convert a dataURL to a File object in Javascript in order to send it over using AJAX. Is it possible? If yes, please tell me how.

Answer 1

If you need to send it over ajax, then there’s no need to use a File object, only Blob and FormData objects are needed.

As I sidenote, why don’t you just send the base64 string to the server over ajax and convert it to binary server-side, using PHP’s base64_decode for example? Anyway, the standard-compliant code from this answer works in Chrome 13 and WebKit nightlies:

function dataURItoBlob(dataURI) {
    // convert base64 to raw binary data held in a string
    // doesn't handle URLEncoded DataURIs - see SO answer #6850276 for code that does this
    var byteString = atob(dataURI.split(',')[1]);

    // separate out the mime component
    var mimeString = dataURI.split(',')[0].split(':')[1].split(';')[0];

    // write the bytes of the string to an ArrayBuffer
    var ab = new ArrayBuffer(byteString.length);
    var ia = new Uint8Array(ab);
    for (var i = 0; i < byteString.length; i++) {
        ia[i] = byteString.charCodeAt(i);
    }

    //Old Code
    //write the ArrayBuffer to a blob, and you're done
    //var bb = new BlobBuilder();
    //bb.append(ab);
    //return bb.getBlob(mimeString);

    //New Code
    return new Blob([ab], {type: mimeString});


}

Then just append the blob to a new FormData object and post it to your server using ajax:

var blob = dataURItoBlob(someDataUrl);
var fd = new FormData(document.forms[0]);
var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();

fd.append("myFile", blob);
xhr.open('POST', '/', true);
xhr.send(fd);