UI to upload many files
Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2005 11:49 am
I have a web application coded in PHP for which users may need to upload many files to a server - anything from one to forty files, depending on what they want to do.
I have thought of a page of <input type=file ....> fields, but this means that the poor user has to choose each file individually, which gets tedious. An easier way for the user would be for he or she to select a folder on their PC containing the files, but HTTP doesn't seem to have a way of uploading a whole folder. Another alternative would be to require the user to ZIP the files into an archive and upload that (and then automatically unzip the archive at the server end), but I want the application to be OS-neutral and usable by rather naive users who may not know anything about archives (and may not posses a copy of an archiving program).
How have others solved this problem? Have you any suggestions for the best way of doing this?
nigel
I have thought of a page of <input type=file ....> fields, but this means that the poor user has to choose each file individually, which gets tedious. An easier way for the user would be for he or she to select a folder on their PC containing the files, but HTTP doesn't seem to have a way of uploading a whole folder. Another alternative would be to require the user to ZIP the files into an archive and upload that (and then automatically unzip the archive at the server end), but I want the application to be OS-neutral and usable by rather naive users who may not know anything about archives (and may not posses a copy of an archiving program).
How have others solved this problem? Have you any suggestions for the best way of doing this?
nigel