File uploading

Axe API provides file-uploading helpers. We are going to explain here how it is easy to add file uploading support to your API.

• You will learn
• How to upload files?
• How to handle files?
• How to send a file upload request to the server?

Getting started

File uploading is an important part of APIs. You can use many different techniques and methods. We are going to explain how you can add the formidable library to your API.

Installing dependencies

First of all, let's install the dependencies. We are going to use the formidable library.

$ npm install --save formidable

Handling files

In Axe API, you are ready to handle files whenever you want. Let's assume that we have a User model and we are going to upload files in the creating new user.

We should create the following hook file;

app/v1/Hooks/User/onBeforeInsert.ts

import { IContext, ApiError } from "axe-api";

export default async ({ formData, req }: IContext) => {
  const [fields, files] = await req.files();

  if (files.length === 0) {
    throw new ApiError("The file parameter is required!");
  }

  // TODO: upload file in anywhere like AWS S3, etc.

  // set the path to the original formData
  formData.path_name = "s3://filename.jpg";
};

You can upload the file wherever you want. Also, you can set the user's model data to be saved for the file location.

TIP

The req.files() method calls the parse() function of formidable library. You can get more information from the library documentation here.

Sending request

The only change is the request type.

You should send the file to the Axe API server like the following example;

$ curl --location 'localhost:3000/api/v1/users' \
  --form 'file=@"/Users/my-user/Download/axe-api.png"' \
  --form 'name="John"' \
  --form 'surname="Locke"'

Next steps

In this section, we simply demonstrate a file-uploading example.

In the next section, we are going to discuss about Authentication.