Question

I’m facing a simple problem
I would like to get a local path from the end-user of my web application. I need only that and not to actually upload a file. (I know there are fileUpload tags in seam or in Primefaces but I just need the local full path as I’m uploading directly to Picasa Web Albums via the Google API)

In other words I would like to bind some kind of html tag : input type=”file”
to a bean property (I notice that the JSF tag h:inputText tag doesn’t have a type attribute)
Any ideas?

Env : JBoss AS 5.1, JSF1.2, Seam 2.2, Primefaces 1.1

Edit : here is my working solution

Thanks to the answers, I implemented the use-case of uploading a file directly to Picasa

    <h:form prependId="false" enctype="multipart/form-data">
        <s:fileUpload id="fileUpload"
                data="#{picasa.incomingFile}"
                contentType="#{picasa.fileType}"/>
        <h:inputText id="albumId"
                value="#{picasa.albumId}" />
        <h:commandLink action="#{picasa.upload()}"
                value="Upload">
            <f:param name="s"
                    value="#{subjectHome.id}"/>
        </h:commandLink>
    </h:form>

and the component code

@Name("picasa")
public class PicasaService {

    @Logger private Log log;

    private PicasawebService service;
    private InputStream incomingFile;
    private String fileType;
    private String albumId;



    @Create
    public void setUp()
    {
        service = new PicasawebService("picasaService");
        try {
            service.setUserCredentials("[e-mail]", "password");
        } catch (AuthenticationException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    public void upload()
    {
        URL albumUrl;
        PhotoEntry returnedPhoto;
        try {
            albumUrl = new URL("https://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/api/user/default/albumid/" + albumId);
            MediaStreamSource myMedia = new MediaStreamSource(incomingFile , this.fileType);
            returnedPhoto = service.insert(albumUrl, PhotoEntry.class, myMedia);
        } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (ServiceException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

This way, it seems to me that the file is not transferred twice (one from end-user machine to my web app’s server and from there to picasa WA server).

Hope this helps

Answer 1

but I just need the local full path as I’m uploading directly to Picasa Web Albums via the Google API

You need to get the file’s content as an InputStream from the JSF file upload component and write it to an FileOutputStream on the server’s local disk file system the usual way, then you can reference it as a File and pass it to the Picasa API as documented.

See also:

• What is the alternative of file browse in JSF?