Question

I would really like to swap out my existing file upload structure for jquery-file-upload but I can’t seem to find any docs for using a database instead of a file system for storage.

Does anyone know if this is possible and if so where might I find some documentation or examples?

Answer 1

What platform are you using?

PHP? .NET? Ruby?

Without knowing the specifics let’s look at the JQuery PHP Example generically to see what is going on

https://github.com/blueimp/jQuery-File-Upload/blob/master/php/index.php

You see in that file

$upload_handler = new UploadHandler();

header('Pragma: no-cache');
header('Cache-Control: private, no-cache');
header('Content-Disposition: inline; filename="files.json"');
header('X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff');
header('Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *');
header('Access-Control-Allow-Methods: OPTIONS, HEAD, GET, POST, PUT, DELETE');
header('Access-Control-Allow-Headers: X-File-Name, X-File-Type, X-File-Size');

switch ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD']) {
    case 'OPTIONS':
        break;
    case 'HEAD':
    case 'GET':
        $upload_handler->get();
        break;
    case 'POST':
        $upload_handler->post();
        break;
    case 'DELETE':
        $upload_handler->delete();
        break;
    default:
        header('HTTP/1.1 405 Method Not Allowed');
}

Look at case ‘POST’

It contains the following

    $upload_handler->post();

So if a file is Posted let’s look at the post routine [This is just meant to handle things in a RESTFul style it appears… proper verbs doing proper things, GET gets a file, Delete delete’s a file, POST Posts a file.]

So let’s look at those next relevant bits now

  public function post() {
        if (isset($_REQUEST['_method']) && $_REQUEST['_method'] === 'DELETE') {
            return $this->delete();
        }
        $upload = isset($_FILES[$this->options['param_name']]) ?
            $_FILES[$this->options['param_name']] : null;
        $info = array();
        if ($upload && is_array($upload['tmp_name'])) {
            foreach ($upload['tmp_name'] as $index => $value) {
                $info[] = $this->handle_file_upload(
                    $upload['tmp_name'][$index],
                    isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FILE_NAME']) ?
                        $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FILE_NAME'] : $upload['name'][$index],
                    isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FILE_SIZE']) ?
                        $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FILE_SIZE'] : $upload['size'][$index],
                    isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FILE_TYPE']) ?
                        $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FILE_TYPE'] : $upload['type'][$index],
                    $upload['error'][$index]
                );
            }
        } elseif ($upload || isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FILE_NAME'])) {
            $info[] = $this->handle_file_upload(
                isset($upload['tmp_name']) ? $upload['tmp_name'] : null,
                isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FILE_NAME']) ?
                    $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FILE_NAME'] : (isset($upload['name']) ?
                        isset($upload['name']) : null),
                isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FILE_SIZE']) ?
                    $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FILE_SIZE'] : (isset($upload['size']) ?
                        isset($upload['size']) : null),
                isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FILE_TYPE']) ?
                    $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FILE_TYPE'] : (isset($upload['type']) ?
                        isset($upload['type']) : null),
                isset($upload['error']) ? $upload['error'] : null
            );
        }

The ultimately important part for you here is

$this->handle_file_upload(
                    $upload['tmp_name'][$index],
                    isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FILE_NAME']) ?
                        $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FILE_NAME'] : $upload['name'][$index],
                    isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FILE_SIZE']) ?
                        $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FILE_SIZE'] : $upload['size'][$index],
                    isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FILE_TYPE']) ?
                        $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FILE_TYPE'] : $upload['type'][$index],
                    $upload['error'][$index]
                );

It is calling handle_file_upload. Now notice how all this works.
The file is uploaded and it determines what the verb was, get, post, delete. It doesn’t care if there is a database or not it only cares what do I do next. It figures to call post
Post then figures hey I need to call handle_file_upload. Now handle_file_upload is a black box to you in a sense, you can just replace it with another one that handles it using some database logic.

If you look at the function handle_file_upload you’ll see

private function handle_file_upload($uploaded_file, $name, $size, $type, $error) {

So take those parameters and use them to make a database query and persist your files that way. Basically just rewrite handle_file_upload

Anyway hope this helps.