Uploading a file via HTML to a Domino database - html

Question

Hopefully someone will be able to assist.
I am creating an online submission form in HTML, with the ability to add upload an attachment. The resulting data ends up in a Notes / Domino database.
I have managed to get the HTML form working, with the upload button. However, when viewing the received data, instead of having an attachment in the rich text field of the Notes form, I end up with the contents of the attachment. This is fine where it is a text document. However, when it is a Word / Excel doc, it ends up as a load of gibberish.
Can anyone suggest what is wrong ?
Here is my code :
<form method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data" action="/webquote.nsf/gendoc?createdocument" >
Attachment: <Input Type="file" NAME="Attachments" MAXLENGTH=50 ALLOW="text/*" >
Thanks,
Simon

Answer 1

Here are two lines of code from a production database I built a while ago:
<form name="SubmissionForm" id="SubmissionForm" action="/<Computed Value>/AgencySubmission?CreateDocument" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">
<input type="file" name="%%File.1">
It works for me. It may not be exactly what you look for, the file is not attached into a Rich Text field, but you can always detach are re-attach it on the server after submission.
I have also built file uploads using jQuery and Ajax, so the page does not have to be reloaded.

Answer 2

The prefered way for this kind of stuff nowadays would be to directly design an xPage. Does that seem doable, or do you have some constraints, like the HTML being designed somewhere else and the integration with Domino later, almost at last resort ?
From the look of your <input> it would look like we are in the later situation.
What's with the "allow" attribute ? I can't find any reference. Did you mean "accept" ? And what about the value of "text/*" ? This could be the source of the giberish, as the browser and/or Domino would interpret the input as text rather than a blob. A value of "multipart/form-data" would perhaps be more appropriate, but no "allow" or "accept" attribute at all works fine too.
For some reasons, Domino being Domino, the "name" attribute of your <input> element must be "%%File.1", in short simply
<input type="file" name="%%File.1">
Your <form> element is spot on.
The last thing to worry about is that your Domino server will see the file comming out of seemingly nowhere and balk with an error 500 "HTTP Web Server: File Upload Not Allowed Exception". You'll need to talk to your Domino admin and have him set the following parameter in the server's notes.ini :
DominoDisableFileUploadChecks=1
Then you're all set.
Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Create a Notes Form (a Form design element), add a File Upload control.
Add a Web Query Save agent (see Form design ouline).
In that agent, get the NotesDocument notessession.documentContext
This will contain the content of your uploaded file, and any other field son your Form, split into Notes items.
You can get the attached file with notesdocument.embeddedobjects to locate all attachments, and/or notesdocument.getAttachment (if you know the filename).
That's perhaps the oldskool way of doing it, but it's tried & tested, and what Domino is expecting you to do.