React axios multiple files upload

Question

I'm trying upload multiple images with axios in React but i cannot figure out what is wrong. First I tried to upload single image and that work just fine. But with multiple images I'm out of options.

I'm creating FormData like so:

for (let i = 0; i < images.length; i++) {
    formData.append('productPhotos[' + i + ']', images[i]);
}

The axios request looking like this

    const config = { headers: { 'Content-Type': 'multipart/form-data' } };

    axios
        .post(endPoints.createProduct, formData, config)
        .then(res => console.log(res))
        .catch(err => console.log(err));

My back-end is written is node/express and I'm using multer for uploading. The signature is look like this:

app.post("/product", upload.array("productPhotos"), (req, res) => {

I tried this back-end end point in PostMan and uploading works for just fine, so the error must be on front-end. Thanks for help.

UPDATE Right way to pass multiple files in formData:

images.forEach(img => {
    formData.append("productPhotos", img)
})

Solution

Here is a full working set up (expanded version of the answer above)

Client side:

// silly note but make sure you're constructing files for these (if you're recording audio or video yourself)
// if you send it something other than file it will fail silently with this set-up 
let arrayOfYourFiles=[image, audio, video]
// create formData object
const formData = new FormData();
arrayOfYourFiles.forEach(file=>{
  formData.append("arrayOfFilesName", file);
});

axios({
  method: "POST",
  url: serverUrl + "/multiplefiles",
  data: formData,
  headers: {
    "Content-Type": "multipart/form-data"
  }
})
//some error handling

Server side (express, node - mutler)

const UPLOAD_FILES_DIR = "./uploads";
const storage = multer.diskStorage({
  destination(req, file, cb) {
    cb(null, UPLOAD_FILES_DIR);
  },
// in case you want to change the names of your files)
  filename(req, file = {}, cb) {
    file.mimetype = "audio/webm";
    // console.log(req)
    const {originalname} = file;
    const fileExtension = (originalname.match(/\.+[\S]+$/) || [])[0];
    cb(null, `${file.fieldname}${Date.now()}${fileExtension}`);
  }
});
const upload = multer({storage});

// post route that will be hit by your client (the name of the array has to match)
app.post("/multiplefiles", upload.array('arrayOfFilesName', 5), function (req, res) {
  console.log(req.files, 'files')
  //logs 3 files that have been sent from the client
}

Comments

[Jan Maděra]

Yes this works fine. I was using the FileList object instead File object and that was the real problem. Thanks for your answer.

[Will Brode]

What is 'answerFormData' on the client side? It looks like its undefined.

[lowcrawler]

On line 3 of the 'client side' ... what type of object is the 'image, audio, video' files? Are they file paths?

[Uros Randelovic]

@lowcrawler you can construct them by doing var someFile= new File([blob], name + ".extension", { contentType: "some/type" });

[Manish Khedekar]

@UrosRandelovic Thanks mate! Saved my day!