Commit 6997d446 authored by Kazuhiko Shiozaki's avatar Kazuhiko Shiozaki

ooo: refuse documents containing links other than embedding objects or local...

ooo: refuse documents containing links other than embedding objects or local sibling links, that is used in ERP5.
parent 6b149d10
Pipeline #34098 failed with stage
in 0 seconds
...@@ -39,6 +39,12 @@ from tempfile import mktemp ...@@ -39,6 +39,12 @@ from tempfile import mktemp
from base64 import b64encode, b64decode from base64 import b64encode, b64decode
from functools import partial from functools import partial
from getopt import getopt, GetoptError from getopt import getopt, GetoptError
from html.parser import HTMLParser
import os.path
from urllib.parse import urlparse
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
import tempfile
from zipfile import BadZipFile, ZipFile
__doc__ = """ __doc__ = """
...@@ -195,6 +201,36 @@ class UnoDocument: ...@@ -195,6 +201,36 @@ class UnoDocument:
self._getPropertyToImport(infilter)) self._getPropertyToImport(infilter))
if not uno_document: if not uno_document:
raise AttributeError("This document can not be loaded or is empty") raise AttributeError("This document can not be loaded or is empty")
def isSafeUrl(url):
parsed_url = urlparse(url)
if parsed_url.scheme == 'data':
return True
elif parsed_url.scheme == '':
norm_path = os.path.normpath(parsed_url.path)
if norm_path[0] not in ('/', '.') or \
os.path.dirname(os.path.normpath(parsed_url.path)) == os.path.dirname(self.document_url):
return True
return False
with tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile() as temp_file:
uno_document.storeToURL(systemPathToFileUrl(temp_file.name), ())
try:
with ZipFile(temp_file.name, 'r') as zip_file:
content = ET.fromstring(zip_file.read('content.xml'))
for e in content.findall('.//*[@{http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink}actuate="onLoad"]'):
href = e.attrib.get('{http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink}href')
if href:
if not isSafeUrl(href):
raise RuntimeError('This document contains unsafe links %s' % href)
except BadZipFile: # HTML input case
class CustomHTMLParser(HTMLParser):
def handle_starttag(self, tag, attrs):
for attr in attrs:
if attr[0] == 'src':
if not isSafeUrl(attr[1]):
raise RuntimeError('This document contains unsafe links %s' % attr[1])
parser = CustomHTMLParser()
with open(temp_file.name, 'r') as f:
parser.feed(f.read())
if refresh: if refresh:
# Before converting to expected format, refresh dynamic # Before converting to expected format, refresh dynamic
# value inside document. # value inside document.
......
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html lang="en"><head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
<title>File input (or "upload") in HTML forms</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" title="Yucca's style" href="test_arquivos/basic.css">
<style type="text/css">
body { font-family: Cambria; font-size-adjust: 0.465; }
h1, h2, h3, h4 { font-family: Candara, sans-serif; }
* { line-height: 1.2; }
</style>
</head><body>
<h1>
<a name="start">File input (or &#8220;upload&#8221;) in HTML forms</a>
</h1>
<p class="summary">A
form
in an HTML document (Web page) can contain an <code>input</code> element
with <code>type="file"</code>. This may let the user include one or
more files into the form submission.
The form is often processed so that such files are stored onto
the disk of the Web server; this is why file input (or file submission)
is often called &#8220;file upload.&#8221;
File input opens interesting possibilities, but browser support is
still limited and generally of poor quality even in newest versions.
Moreover, users are often puzzled with it, since most people
use file input rather
rarely.</p>
<p>This document presents
</p><ul>
<li> <a href="#basics">the basics</a>, including
references to <a href="#server">server-side techniques needed</a>,
a simple
<a href="#example">example</a> to test and
<a href="#how">notes on how it was intended to work</a>
</li><li> <a href="#support">notes on browser support</a>:
<a href="#ie">IE</a>, <a href="#netscape">Netscape</a>,
<a href="#moz">Mozilla</a>,
<a href="#opera">Opera</a>,
<a href="#safari">Safari</a>;
<a href="#warn">users&#8217; problems with file input</a>;
<a href="#present">appearance of the Browse button and the filename box</a>
</li><li><a href="#acc">accessibility problems: file input is a challenge to many users</a>
</li><li> <a href="#alt">suggestions for allowing
alternative file submission methods</a>
</li><li> <a href="#ref">some references</a>
</li><li> <a href="#js">notes on client-side scripting issues</a>
</li><li> <a href="#tech">some technical notes</a> on the
specifications and implementations:
<a href="#enctype">The <code>enctype</code> attribute</a>;&nbsp;
<a href="#multi">Submitting several files?</a>;&nbsp;
<a href="#value">Setting the default filename</a>;&nbsp;
<a href="#name">Getting the original name</a>;&nbsp;
<a href="#size">The <code>size</code> attribute</a>;&nbsp;
<a href="#restr">Setting restrictions on the file size</a>;&nbsp;
<a href="#filter">Filtering (through a file type filter)</a>;&nbsp;
<a href="#rfc">The status of RFC 1867</a>.
</li></ul>
<h2><a name="basics">The basics</a></h2>
<p>The idea behind file input in HTML
forms is to let users include entire files from their system
into a form submission. The files could be text files, image files,
or other data. For text files, file input would
allow more convenient mechanisms than typing (or cutting&nbsp;&amp; pasting)
large pieces of text. For binary data, such as images, file input
would be not just more convenient but usually the only practical way.
For more information on the design principles of file input,
see
<a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1867.html">RFC 1867</a>,
<cite>Form-based File Upload in HTML</cite>.</p>
<p>Writing an HTML form with a file input field is rather simple.
The difficult thing is actually to find or write a server-side script
which can <em>do</em> something useful when it receives data in such a format.
And the <em>really</em> difficult thing is to make such processing
robust and controlled so that
all data is processed properly and so that
someone won&#8217;t e.g. fill your server&#8217;s
disk space with gigabytes of junk, by ignorance or by malevolence.</p>
<p>You need to know the general basics of
writing HTML forms; if you need
links to tutorials and references on forms, consult
<cite><a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/forms/index.html">How to write HTML forms</a></cite>.
Then, what
you need to do <strong>in HTML</strong> is to
write a form so that
</p><ul>
<li> the <code>action</code> attribute refers to a server-side
script which is capable of handling submissions containing forms or,
technically speaking, being in <code>multipart/form-data</code>
format; as explained below,
don&#8217;t even dream about using
<code>mailto:</code> URLs in <code>action</code> attributes,
in this context or otherwise!
</li><li> it has the attribute
<a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/forms/methods.html" title="Methods GET and POST in HTML forms&#8212;what&#8217;s the difference?">
<code>method="post"</code></a>
</li><li> it has the attribute
<code><a href="#enctype">enctype</a>="multipart/form-data"</code>
</li><li> it contains a field
<br>
<code>&lt;input type="file" name="<var>somename</var>" size="<var>chars</var>"&gt;</code>
<br>
where
<ul class="emb">
<li> <var>somename</var> is a name you assign to the field as you like; the
form data set will contain the content of the file &#8220;under that
name&#8221;, and that name has nothing to do with the filename
</li><li> <var>chars</var> is an integer specifying the desired width,
as a number of characters,
of the filename box to be displayed; the <code>size</code> attribute
is optional, but setting
it to some relatively
large value (say <code>40</code>) probably helps the user,
since the default width of the
box in current browsers is rather narrow for typical filenames.
(See <a href="#size">notes on the <code>size</code> attribute</a>.)
</li></ul>
</li></ul>
<p><small>Minimally, the form needs to contain a
<a title="Description of INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT in WDG&#8217;s HTML 4.0 reference" href="http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/forms/input.html#submit">
a submit element</a> too. It may also contain any other fields you like,
and explanatory texts, images, etc.</small></p>
<p class="warning"><a name="goofs">A common problem with file input
in forms</a> is that form data gets sent but only the <em>name</em>
of the file is included. The reason is typically that the <code>form</code>
element does not contain the attributes mentioned above.</p>
<p>Since <a href="#support">browser support</a> to file input
is still problematic, consider
<a href="#alt"><strong>providing alternative methods</strong></a>
of submitting data, too.</p>
<p><small>It is hopefully evident that what happens in file
input is the submission of <em>a copy of the file content</em>.
The file on the user&#8217;s disk remains intact, and the server-side
script cannot change <em>it</em>, only the copy of the data.
</small></p>
<h2><a name="server">Setting up a server-side script</a></h2>
<p>As mentioned above, the server-side script
(form handler) is the difficult part in creating a possibility
for submitting files.
There are useful brief notes on
that in the <a href="#faq" title="&quot;How can I allow file uploads to my web site?&quot; in Web Authoring FAQ by WDG">FAQ entry</a>, but it <em>is</em> a difficult programming issue,
and outside the scope of this document of mine.
I&nbsp;just wish to emphasize&#8212;in addition to
<a href="#restr">security issues</a> discussed below&nbsp;-
that
<strong>what happens to the data after submission is at the hands
of the server-side script</strong>. It could &#8220;upload&#8221; it, i.e.
save onto the server&#8217;s disk under some name, but it might just as
well process the data only by extracting some information from it,
or send the data by E-mail somewhere, or even send it to a printer.
For example, the
<a href="http://www.htmlhelp.org/tools/validator/">WDG HTML Validator</a>
provides, as one alternative,
<a href="http://www.htmlhelp.org/tools/validator/upload.html">a page containing a form for submitting a file</a> to validation.
</p>
<p>There are <strong>different server-side techniques</strong> for
processing forms, so you need to consult documentation applicable to
the technique you use, which is usually dictated by the characteristics
of the server software. In particular, if you use
<strong><a href="http://www.webthing.com/tutorials/cgifaq.html" title="CGI Programming FAQ">CGI</a></strong>, it can be useful
to check section
<a href="http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Perl/File_Uploading/"><cite>Programs and Scripts: Perl: File Uploading</cite></a> in
<a href="http://www.cgi-resources.com/"><cite>CGI Resource Index</cite></a>.
(See also the links under &#8220;Related Categories&#8221;
for scripts in other languages.)
You might find a script suitable for your purposes, or at least ideas for
writing your own script.
In your own coding using Perl with CGI,
you&#8217;ll probably benefit from using the
<code><a href="http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/CPAN/data/CGI.pm/CGI.html">CGI.pm</a></code> module; see especially
section
<cite><a href="http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/CPAN/data/CGI.pm/CGI.html#CREATING_A_FILE_UPLOAD_FIELD">Creating a file upload field</a></cite>
in its documentation, and my
<cite><a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/perl/cgi.html">Fool&#8217;s Guide to CGI.pm</a></cite>.
As an another example, if
<a href="http://www.php.net/">PHP</a> is what you use, see
section
<cite><a href="http://www.php.net/manual/features.file-upload.php3">Handling file uploads</a></cite>
in
<cite><a href="http://www.php.net/manual/">PHP Manual</a></cite>. For
ASP, see e.g. <cite><a href="http://www.asp101.com/articles/jacob/scriptupload.asp">Pure ASP File Upload</a></cite>
by Jacob Gilley.</p>
<h2><a name="example">Example</a></h2>
<p>The example below uses
<a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/forms/sendback.pl" type="text/plain" title="A Perl script for echoing back form data, formatted as a table">my simple sendback script</a> discussed in
my
<a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/forms/testing.html" title="How to test HTML forms using simple remotely-accessible scripts">document on testing HTML forms</a>.
It simply echoes back the data it gets, but presented so that your
browser will display it nicely; for a file field, only
40 first octets (byes) are shown.</p>
<p>The HTML markup is:
</p><pre><code class="html">&lt;form action="http://www.cs.tut.fi/cgi-bin/run/~jkorpela/echo.cgi"
enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post"&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
Type some text (if you like):&lt;br&gt;
&lt;input type="text" name="textline" size="30"&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
Please specify a file, or a set of files:&lt;br&gt;
&lt;input type="file" name="datafile" size="40"&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div&gt;
&lt;input type="submit" value="Send"&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;/form&gt;</code></pre>
<p>And on your browser, with its current settings, and
as possibly affected by
<a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/basic.css" type="text/css">my stylesheet</a>,
this is what the form looks like
</p><form action="http://www.cs.tut.fi/cgi-bin/run/~jkorpela/echo.cgi" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">
<p>
Type some text (optionally):<br>
<input id="txt" name="textline" size="30" type="text">
</p>
<p>
Please specify a file, or a set of files:<br>
<input name="datafile" size="40" type="file">
</p>
<div><input value="Send" type="submit"></div>
</form>
<h2><a name="how">How it was intended to work</a></h2>
<p><a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1867.html" title="Form-based File Upload in HTML">RFC 1867</a> describes, in section
<cite>3&nbsp;Suggested implementation</cite>, how
file input was intended to take place in a typical situation:
</p><blockquote>
<h3>3.1 Display of <code>FILE</code> widget</h3>
<p> When a[n] <code>INPUT</code>
tag of type <code>FILE</code> is encountered, the browser might show
a display of (previously selected) file names, and a &#8220;Browse&#8221; button
or selection method. Selecting the &#8220;Browse&#8221; button would cause the
browser to enter into a file selection mode appropriate for the
platform. Window-based browsers might pop up a file selection window,
for example. In such a file selection dialog, the user would have the
option of replacing a current selection, adding a new file selection,
etc. Browser implementors might choose let the list of file names be
manually edited.</p>
<p> If an <code>ACCEPT</code> attribute is present, the browser might constrain the
file patterns prompted for to match those with the corresponding
appropriate file extensions for the platform.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Upon form submit, the contents of the files would then
be included into the data set sent, as defined by the specification
of the
<a href="#enctype"><code>multipart/form-data</code></a>
data type (data format, data encoding).</p>
<h2><a name="support">Browser support to file input</a></h2>
<p class="important">Although most browsers have
supported file input for a long time, the <em>quality</em>
of implementations is poor. Therefore users easily get confused with
file input.</p>
<p>The following notes on browser support are mostly
historical and based on fairly old
observations of mine (on Win95, Win98, and WinNT).
These notes are followed by more interesting notes
<a href="#warn">users&#8217; problems</a>
especially caused by the poor quality of support on modern browsers.</p>
<h3><a name="ie">Internet Explorer</a></h3>
<p><strong>IE 3.0</strong>
displays an input box and
lets the user type a filename there&#8212;and it sends the
<em>name</em> as part of the form data!
Generally, any browser without any code which tries to support
<code>input type="file"</code> can be <em>expected</em> to
behave that way. (A browser which does not recognize <code>"file"</code>
as a possible value for the <code>type</code> attribute can be expected
to ignore that attribute, which means that the default value will be
used, as if
<a title="Description of INPUT TYPE=TEXT in WDG&#8217;s HTML 4.0 reference" href="http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/forms/input.html#text"><code>type="text"</code></a> had been specified.)
</p>
<!--
<p><small>It has been reported that IE 3.0 from minor
version 3.02 onwards supports file input, if an add-on
is installed.</small></p>
-->
<p><strong>IE 4</strong> has an input box
and a &#8220;Browse&#8221; capability,
and it actually sends the file content,
but it still allows <em>one</em> file
only to be selected.
The &#8220;Browse&#8221; function display is <a href="#filter" title="Filtering (through a file type filter)">unfiltered</a>, i.e. all files
which are normally visible are selectable.
There does not seem to be any improvement in this respect in IE 5,
or IE&nbsp;6, or IE&nbsp;7.</p>
<h3><a name="netscape">Netscape</a></h3>
<p>According to
<a href="http://devedge.netscape.com/library/manuals/1998/htmlguide/tags10.html#1312487">Netscape&#8217;s documentation on file input</a>,
support to it exists already in
<strong>Netscape&nbsp;2</strong>. <!--I haven&#8217;t tested that, so I will
mainly comment on version&nbsp;4 only.--></p>
<p><strong>Netscape 4</strong> support to file input has
a &#8220;Browse&#8221; capability, too, but the browsing has by default
a
<a href="#filter" title="Filtering (through a file type filter)">filter</a>
which limits selectability to &#8220;HTML files&#8221;.
The user can manually change this, though it is questionable
how familiar users are with such things.
Only one file can be specified.
There does not seem to be any improvement in this respect in Netscape 4.5.
Here is an example of the user interface:
</p><blockquote><p>
<a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/forms/file.gif">
<img src="http://example.com/file.gif" title="Screen shot of Netscape 4&#8217;s user interface for file input" alt="(A popup window, titled &quot;File Upload&quot;, with a typical
Windows-style set of directory and file icons, and basic
functionality for navigation in the directory hierarchy.
There is a field (initially empty) for File name, and a pulldown
menu named Files of type, initially set to HTML Files.)" border="1" height="332" width="551"></a></p></blockquote>
<h3 id="moz">Mozilla</h3>
<p>The above-mentioned
strange feature of Netscape has been fixed in
<a href="http://www.mozilla.org/">Mozilla</a>, which
uses no filter (i.e. displays all files);
on the other hand it (at least in several versions) gives
no user option to switch to a filtered view!</p>
<p>Otherwise, Mozilla browsers follow the IE and Netscape tradition
in implementing file input.</p>
<h3><a name="opera">Opera</a></h3>
<p><a href="http://www.operasoftware.com/" title="Opera software home page"><strong>Opera</strong></a>
supports file input rather well.
<!--(This applies to 3.60 official release;
there were serious problems in beta releases.)-->
It provides a &#8220;Browse&#8221; menu,
though the button for activating it carries the label &#8220;...&#8221;,
which might be somewhat confusing.
It lets the user specify several files from the menu:
</p><ul class="emb">
<li> Normally when you click on a file, the selection is changed, but...
</li><li> if you keep the Ctrl key pressed down while clicking on a
file, Opera <em>adds</em> it to the selection, and
</li><li> if you keep the Shift key pressed down while clicking on a
file, Opera discards the current selection and replaces it with a <em>range</em>
of files, from the file you clicked on to the file you last clicked before that,
inclusively.
</li></ul>
<p>It isn&#8217;t perfect though. The Browse window is rather small, and it is
impossible to pick up several ranges, i.e. you must click on the files individually
unless you want to select just one contiguous range.
And the box for file names is quite small too, and its size is not
affected by the <code>size</code> attribute.
See also <a href="#value">notes on setting the default filename</a>.
</p><p>When several files are specified (for one file input field),
Opera puts them into a <code>multipart</code> message inside
a <code>multipart</code> message.
</p>
<h3 id="safari">Safari</h3>
<p>The Safari browser is popular in the Mac environment and is now
available for Windows as well, as a beta version.</p>
<p>I have been told that on Safari, the file input widget has just a
browse button, labeled
&#8220;Choose file&#8230;,&#8221;
with no filename field.</p>
<h3><a name="warn">Users&#8217; problems with file input</a></h3>
<p>On the browsers discussed above,
if the user <strong class="warning">types a filename directly</strong> into
the input box, it must be the <em>full pathname</em> and it must
be typed exactly. If the input is not a name
of an existing file
(e.g. due to a typo),
then the form will be sent
as if an empty file had been specified
(though with the name given by the user),
and <em>no
warning</em> is given. People who encounter file input for the
first time might be expected to get very confused, since
the filename box appears first and looks like an area
where the user should type something. </p>
<p>The user probably often wishes to <strong>view</strong> the
contents of files in the dialog, since it is difficult to
select the file on the basis of its <em>name</em> only.
On Windows systems, the browsers discussed here seem to use
widgets where normal clicking on a file icon selects it, and to
open it (in some program) one needs to use <em>right click</em> and
select a suitable action. I guess most users won&#8217;t find that out
without being helped. The following screen capture presents
the dialogue on IE&nbsp;4 (on WinNT) in a situation where the user
has right clicked on an icon and an action menu has popped up and
the user is about to select the <u>O</u>pen action (which would,
in this case, probably open the <code>.jpg</code> file in a graphics
program or in a new browser window.</p>
<img alt="(A Choose file dialog, with a popup menu on top of it,
with Select as the first and hightlighted alternative.
The Open alternative has been focused on. There are
other alternatives below it, e.g. Add to Zip, Send To,
and Properties." src="test_arquivos/select.gif" height="358" width="436">
<p><small>There&#8217;s little you can do as the author of a form
to help users in getting acquainted with such issues.
If you think it&#8217;s useful to refer to instructions for some
particular browsing environments, make it clear what situations
(browsers, operating systems)
the instructions apply to.</small></p>
<p>The technical problems discussed here are one reason why
authors should consider providing <em>alternatives</em> to file input.
There&#8217;s a section on <a href="#acc" title="File input is a challenge to many users">accessibility problems</a> below,
discussing some additional reasons.</p>
<h3><a name="present">The appearance of the Browse button and the filename box</a></h3>
<table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="8" cellspacing="0" width="40%">
<tbody><tr><td>
<form action="http://www.cs.tut.fi/cgi-bin/run/~jkorpela/echo.cgi" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">
<div><input name="datafile" type="file">
<input type="submit"></div>
</form>
</td></tr></tbody></table>
<p>All the browsers mentioned above use essentially
similar appearance for the
<a href="http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?query=widget" title="Definition of &quot;widget&quot;">widget</a> used to implement a file input element:
a text input box for the filename looks similar to
normal text input elements (<code>&lt;input type="text"&gt;</code>), and
the Browse button
resembles submit buttons
(thus, is often grey), and it has
the text &#8220;Browse&#8221; or
its equivalent in another language.
</p>
<p><small>That text is under the control of the browser, not the author.
It has however
<a href="http://www.deja.com/msgid.xp?MID=%3C38119FEE.DFF60EBA@sector27.de%3E">been reported</a> that on Netscape, the text could be changed using a
<!--"http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/communicator/jsguide/scripts.htm"-->
signed script.</small></p>
<p>This is somewhat problematic, since it does not make
the essential difference between submit and browse buttons
visually obvious. Cf. to similar
<a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/forms/imagereset.html#why">problems with reset buttons</a>.</p>
<p>There is no way to <em>guarantee</em> that Browse buttons
&#8220;look different&#8221;
or otherwise force any particular <em>appearance</em>
such as font face or size. See
the document
<a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/forms/present.html" title="The visual appearance of input fields in forms on Web
pages, such as the width of a text input field or the color of a
submit button, can be affected using presentational markup
or style sheets or both. This document discusses both ways
and their practical effect on present-day browsers."><cite>Affecting the presentation
of form fields on Web pages</cite></a>
for an overview and examples. The Browse button is particularly
&#8220;immune&#8221; to any presentational suggestions; it&#8217;s typically a
&#8220;hard-wired&#8221; part of the browser&#8217;s user interface.
In particular, on IE, declaring a background color and a text color
for <code>input</code> elements in a style sheet affects
submit buttons (<code>input type="submit"</code>) but not
Browse buttons (<code>input type="file"</code>).
</p>
<p>If you think that &#8220;looking different&#8221; is important, you might thus try
suggesting presentational features for <em>submit</em>
buttons rather than Browse buttons (i.e., for <code>input type="file"</code>
elements). However, this would mean that
Browse buttons look like (the default appearance of) submit buttons
whereas real submit buttons don&#8217;t!
So it seems that it&#8217;s
<strong>best to let browsers present Browse and submit
buttons their way</strong>.
</p>
<p>The <strong>input box</strong> for the filename, on the other hand,
seems to be affected by similar factors as normal text input boxes.
You can apply various CSS properties to the <code>input</code>
element, though it is far from obvious what they should mean for
a file input widget or what they actually cause in each browser.</p>
<p><small>Historical note:
Since <code>input</code> elements are inline (text-level) elements,
you can put text level markup
like <code>font</code> around them in HTML.
However, such markup is often ignored when rendering form fields
For example,
<code>&lt;font size="4" face="Courier"&gt;&lt;input type="file" ...&gt;&lt;/font&gt;</code>
<em>might</em>
increase the font size and set the font to Courier. Specifically,
this happened on Netscape&nbsp;4 but not on most other browsers.
(As a side effect, on Netscape&nbsp;4, such
a font size change affected the dimensions of the Browse
button but not the font size of the the text &#8220;Browse&#8221;.
Note that
if you included a <code>color</code> attribute there,
Netscape&nbsp; ignored it.)</small></p>
<p>You could suggest presentational properties
in a style sheet too, e.g.<br>
<code>&lt;input type="file" ... style="color:#f00; background:#ccc"&gt;</code><br>
and these in turn would be ignored e.g. by Netscape&nbsp;4
but applied, to some extent at least, by most other graphic browsers.
It is difficult to say how CSS rules <em>should</em>
affect the widget, since it is an open question whether e.g.
the text of the Browse button (which is not part of the
textual content of the HTML document)
should be formatted according to the font properties of the
<code>input</code> element. (For example, IE&nbsp;4 and Mozilla seem to
apply the font-size property but not the font-family property when
rendering the button text. IE&nbsp;6 applies font-family too.</p>
<p>The following example demonstrates how your browser treats a file
input element where we suggest presentational properties both in HTML
and in CSS:</p>
<form action="http://www.cs.tut.fi/cgi-bin/run/~jkorpela/echo.cgi" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">
<div>
<b><tt><big><input name="foo" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 204) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: rgb(102, 51, 0); -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; font-size: 160%; font-family: Courier,monospace; font-weight: bold;" type="file"></big></tt></b>
</div>
</form>
<p>The example has the HTML markup<br>
<code>&lt;b&gt;&lt;tt&gt;&lt;big&gt;&lt;input type="file" ...&gt;&lt;/big&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/b&gt;</code><br>
and the following CSS declarations applied to that <code>input</code> element:<br>
<code>color:#630; background:#ffc none; font-size:160%; font-family:Courier,monospace; font-weight:bold</code><br>
Such suggestions might help in making it clearer to users that
there is a <em>special</em> input box. But try to avoid making it look
<em>too</em> special, since there is then the risk of not getting
intuitively recognized as an input box at all.</p>
<p>At Quirksmode.org, there is a longish article that discusses
fairly complex CSS techniques for changing the appearance of
file input elements, in a sense:
<cite><a href="http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/inputfile.html">
Styling an input type="file"</a></cite>. I&nbsp;would however advice
against any substantial changes in the appearance. Any esthetic
improvement over browser defaults (in addition to being a matter
of taste) has a price: it makes even the experienced user uncertain
of what the widget is.</p>
<h2><a name="acc">File input is a challenge to many users</a></h2>
<p>This section discusses some specific <em>accessibility</em>
problems in file input. For an overview of what accessibility is and
why it is important, please refer to the
<cite><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20030605114512/http://www.diffuse.org/accessibility.html">Guide to Web Accessibility and Design for All</a></cite>.</p>
<p>It has been reported that some
special-purpose browsing software,
such as some versions of the
<a href="http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software_jaws.asp">JAWS</a> screen reader, have serious difficulties in file input.
This is understandable, since the common implementation in browsers
is oriented towards visual interaction.</p>
<p>Even the &#8220;normal&#8221; browsers have serious difficulties in file
input without using a mouse. (There are different reasons, including
physiological and neurological problems, why the user may need to work
without a mouse or other pointing devide.)
In Internet Explorer&nbsp;6, you can select the
Browse button by tabbing, but if you try to use
the keyboard to activate it, hitting the Enter key, the browser
<em>submits the form</em> instead!
You would need to know that hitting the <em>space bar</em>
(when focused on the Browse button)
activates
the file selection dialogue.
Netscape&nbsp;7 skips over the browse button
entirely when tabbing&#8212;it cannot be selected without a mouse.</p>
<p><small>Not surprisingly, on Opera things work reasonably.
The user can
select the Browse button using the tab key and activate it
by pressing the enter key, then select a file for upload from the
file system; you would use the arrow keys move around in the file
selection.</small></p>
<p>On the <a href="http://lynx.browser.org/">Lynx</a>
text browser, at least on Lynx&nbsp;2.8.4 on Unix,
there is no Browse button, and there is no dialogue
for accessing the computer&#8217;s
file system. Thus, the user needs to know the exact path name and syntax to
type in the file name for upload, as is apparently also the case for
IE and Netscape.</p>
<p>There is also the
<em>usability problem</em>
that the browsing
may start from a part of the file system in a manner which is
not so natural to the user. The initial selection might be
e.g. that of the directory where the Web browser itself resides!
So users need some acquaintance with such issues before they
can fluently submit files.</p>
<p>More generally, since file input is relatively rare,
users are often <strong>not familiar</strong> with it.
They might not recognize the Browse button, and might have difficulties
in understanding what&#8217;s going on when they click on it (or fail to
click on it).</p>
<p class="important">Thus, authors should normally
include some short explanation about the presence of a file
input field before the field itself. This can usually me done
in a natural way, explaining simultaneously what kind and type of file
should be submitted.</p>
<p>For example, the explanation could say: &#8220;Please specify, if possible,
an image
file containing your photo in JPEG format.&#8221;
Such a note may not help much when a user
encounters such a field for the first time in his life,
but it helps him to associate the eventual problems with a concept
of file input and to explain his problems when seeking for help.
And if he has tried to use file input before,
it tells him to stay tuned to something special, and
perhaps at this point, before entering the file input field, to access the
file system outside the browser and find the exact path name of the file
he wants to submit.</p>
<h2><a name="alt">How to provide alternatives</a></h2>
<p>There are several possible ways to let people submit their
files even when their browsers do not
<a href="#support" title="Browser support to file input">support</a> file fields in forms
(or the support is of so poor quality that they don&#8217;t want to use it).</p>
<p>You could include a
<strong><a title="Description of TEXTAREA in WDG&#8217;s HTML 4.0 reference" href="http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/forms/textarea.html"><code>TEXTAREA</code></a></strong> element into the form.
This would work especially for <em>text</em> files in the sense that a user
could open his file in an editor and cut &amp; paste the data
into the textarea. Naturally, this becomes awkward for large files,
but it might still be a good idea to have a textarea along with
a file input field. Your server side script would need some more
code to handle both.</p>
<p>You could simply include an <strong>E-mail address</strong>
and encourage people to send their files to that address as
attachments. You would need to have some processing for such
submissions, but it <em>could</em> be automated using some
software like <a href="http://www.iki.fi/era/procmail/mini-faq.html" title="Procmail FAQ">Procmail</a>. On the other hand, you might decide that such
submissions will be rare, and process them &#8220;by hand.&#8221;
Make sure the address is <strong>visible</strong> on the page
itself. You could make it a <code>mailto:</code> link too,
but don&#8217;t risk the functionality
by some misguided attempt to
<a href="http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/html/links.html#mailto-subject">include a fixed <code>Subject</code> header</a>!
Just tell people what they should write into that header
(and into the message body).
</p>
<p>Sometimes you might consider setting up an
<strong>FTP server</strong>, or
using one, so that it has a free upload area.
You would then just specify the server and the area, and
people could
use their favorite FTP clients. Note that for the submission of
a large number of files, FTP would be more comfortable than
using a form with a file input field.
</p>
<p>Especially for local users, you could just give a
<strong>physical address</strong> to which people can bring or
send their files e.g. on diskettes or CD roms. Make it clear to them
<em>in advance</em> which media and formats you can handle that way.
</p>
<h2><a name="ref">References</a></h2>
<ul>
<li> <a href="http://www.htmlhelp.org/reference/html40/forms/input.html#file">The part which describes <code>input type="file"</code></a> in
<a href="http://www.htmlhelp.org/reference/html40/forms/input.html">the description of the <code>input</code> element</a> in
<a href="http://www.htmlhelp.org/reference/html40/"><cite>HTML
4.0 Reference</cite></a> by
<a href="http://www.htmlhelp.org/" title="Web Design Group">WDG</a>.
That document is also available e.g. as
<a href="http://htmlhelp.inet.tele.dk/reference/html40/forms/input.html">a mirror copy in Denmark</a>. Note that the document contains,
under <cite>More information</cite>,
references to the definition of the <code>input</code>
element in HTML specifications.
</li><li> <a href="http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/html/forms.html#file-upload" name="faq">Answer to the question
<cite>How can I allow file uploads to my web site?</cite></a>
in <a href="http://www.htmlhelp.com/" title="Web Design Group">WDG</a>&#8217;s
<a href="http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/html/" title="Web Authoring FAQ (index page)"><cite>Web Authoring FAQ</cite></a>.
That document too has
<a href="http://htmlhelp.inet.tele.dk/faq/html/forms.html#file-upload">a mirror copy in Denmark</a>.
</li></ul>
<p>See also <a href="#rfc">notes on RFC 1867</a>.</p>
<h2><a name="js">Notes on client-side scripting issues</a></h2>
<p>In <a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/forms/javascript.html#scripting-gen">client-side
scripting</a>, there are some special problems when handling
file input fields. The <a href="http://www.irt.org/script/form.htm"><cite>JavaScript Form FAQ</cite></a> contains answers to
such questions:
</p><ul>
<li><a href="http://www.irt.org/script/1154.htm">FAQ 1154</a> How can I set the value of a fileupload form field?</li><!--JavaScript Form-->
<li><a href="http://www.irt.org/script/561.htm">FAQ 561</a> How can I extract just the file name from a forms file upload field?</li><!--JavaScript Form-->
<li><a href="http://www.irt.org/script/780.htm">FAQ 780</a> Can you simulate a click on an &lt;input type="file"&gt; button?</li><!--JavaScript Form-->
</ul>
<p>See also
<a href="#filter">notes on filtering</a> above as regards to support
to event attributes for file input.</p>
<h2><a name="tech">Technical notes</a></h2>
<p>
The <cite><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/">HTML 4.01 specification</a></cite> discusses, in
<a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html">section <cite>Forms</cite></a>,
issues related to file input fields along with other types of fields.
The notes below hopefully help in locating
and interpreting
the relevant portions.</p>
<h3><a name="enctype">The <code>enctype</code> attribute</a></h3>
<p>
The HTML 4.01 specification
<a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html">defines an <code>enctype</code> attribute</a> for the
<code>form</code> element.
Its value is generically defined <!--(though only in
<a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/sgml/dtd.html#ContentType"
>a DTD comment</a>!)--> as being a &#8220;media type&#8221;, referring to
<a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2045.html" title="Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies">RFC 2045</a>. (That
<a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/rfc.var" title="What RFCs are&#8212;General info on RFCs">RFC</a> is actually just one part of a large set of documents which
what media types are. In particular, the general description of
the media type concept is in
<a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2046.html" title="Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types">RFC&nbsp;2046</a>.)
</p><p>
<a name="mediatype">A <dfn>media type</dfn></a>,
also known as <dfn>content type</dfn>, <dfn>Internet media type</dfn>, or
<dfn>MIME type</dfn>, defines a <em>data format</em> such as
plain text (<code>text/plain</code>), GIF image (<code>image/gif</code>)
or binary data with unspecified internal structure
(<code>application/octet-stream</code>).
</p><p>
But in the context of form submission, the use of a media
type as the value of the <code>enctype</code> attribute is meaningful
only if there is a definition of the <strong>conversion</strong> to be
done. This means the exact way of <em>encoding</em> the form data,
which is essentially a set of <var>name</var>/<var>value</var> pairs,
into a particular data format. The definition must be rigorous, since
otherwise it is impossible to process the data in a useful, robust way
by computer programs.
</p><p>The HTML specification
<a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#h-17.13.4">defines two possible values for <code>enctype</code></a>:
</p><dl>
<dt> <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#h-17.13.4.1"><code>enctype="application/x-www-form-urlencoded"</code></a>
(the default)
</dt><dd> This implies a simple encoding which presents the fields as
<var>name</var><code>=</code><var>value</var> strings separated by
ampersands (<code>&amp;</code>) and uses some special
<a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/chars.html#esc">&#8220;escape&#8221; mechanisms
for characters</a>, such as <code>%28</code> for the &#8220;(&#8221; character.
It&#8217;s confusing if people try to read it&#8212;it was meant to be
processed by programs, not directly read by humans!
</dd><dt> <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#h-17.13.4.2"><code>enctype="multipart/form-data"</code></a>
</dt><dd> This implies that the form data set is encoded so that
each form field (more exactly, each &#8220;control&#8221;) is presented
in a format suitable for that field, and the data set as a whole
is a <code>multipart</code> message containing those
presentations as its components. This is wasteful for &#8220;normal&#8221;
forms but appropriate, even the only feasible way, for forms
containing file fields. The <code>multipart</code> structure
means that each file comes in a nice &#8220;package&#8221; inside a larger
package, with a suitable &#8220;label&#8221; (content type information)
on the inner &#8220;package.&#8221;
This type was originally defined in
<a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1867.html" title="Form-based File Upload in HTML">RFC&nbsp;1867</a> but it is also discussed in
<a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2388.html" title="Returning Values from Forms: multipart/form-data">RFC&nbsp;2388</a>
(see <a href="#rfc">notes on the RFCs</a> later).
</dd></dl>
<p><small>Browsers
may support other values too, but are not required to, and it is
generally unsafe to use them.
Sometimes people use <code>enctype="text/plain"</code>,
and <code>text/plain</code> is <i>per se</i> a well-defined media type;
but there is no specification of the exact method of encoding
a form data set into such a format, and browsers are not required to
support such an attribute&#8212;so <em>anything</em> may happen if
you use it.</small></p>
<p class="important">Normally you should not try
to re-invent the wheel by
writing code which interprets (decodes) the encoded form data.
Instead, call a suitable routine in a subroutine <strong>library</strong>
for the programming language you use. It typically decodes the data
into a convenient format for you to process in your own code.
</p>
<p>It seems that the HTML 4.01 specification contains no explicit
requirement that <code>enctype="multipart/form-data"</code> be
used if the form contains a file input field
(although it explicitly
<a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#h-17.13.4.2">recommends</a> that).
But e.g. IE 4 and Netscape 4 handle form submissions incorrectly
if the <code>enctype</code> is defaulted in such a case:
they send the <em>name</em> of the file instead of its content!</p>
<h3><a name="multi">Submitting several files?</a></h3>
<p>
The HTML 4.01 specification uses the term
<dfn>file select</dfn> for the &#8220;control&#8221; (i.e. form field)
created by an <code>input type="file"</code> element. It
<a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#h-17.2.1">specifies file select</a> so
that this control type allows the user to select files
so that their contents may be submitted with a form. Note the
plural &#8220;files&#8221;&#8212;the idea is clearly that one such field
should allow the inclusion of several files.
</p><p>
Note that there is nothing an author needs to do, and nothing he
<em>can</em> do, to make a browser allow the selection of several
files per input field. It depends on the browser whether that is
possible.
</p><p>
However, as described above,
the <a href="#support">current browser support</a> is
poor: only some versions of Opera support multi-selection,
and these do not include the newest versions.
And in fact, even if a browser allows users to pick up several files
for one
<code>input type="file"</code> field, users might not know how
they can do that, or <em>how</em> they can
do that!</p>
<p>Thus,
an author might,
as a <strong>workaround</strong>,
include several
<code>input type="file"</code> fields if it is desirable that users
can include several files into one form submission.
<a href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2000Jul/0077.html" title="Re: Form-based Multiple File Upload in HTML
(a message in the www-html list, 2000-07-21)">Andrew Clover has suggested some interesting techniques</a>
for making the appearance of the fields dynamic
(in JavaScript or in a server-based way)
so that
&#8220;the user isn&#8217;t immediately confronted with two dozen empty file upload boxes.&#8221;
</p><p>Alternatively, or additionally, an author might encourage users
to use suitable software like
<a href="http://www.winzip.com/">WinZip</a>
or <a href="ftp://ftp.freesoftware.com/pub/infozip/WiZ.html">WiZ</a>
to &#8220;zip&#8221; several files together. Naturally the server-side script
must then be somehow prepared to handle zipped files.
</p><p>
</p><h3><a name="value">Setting the default filename</a></h3>
<p>The HTML 4.01 specification
<a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#h-17.4.1">describes
the <code>value</code> attribute</a>
for a file input field by saying that browsers (user agents)
&#8220;may use the value of the <code>value</code>
attribute as the initial file name.&#8221; This however is
<strong>usually not supported by browsers</strong>. The usual
explanation is &#8220;security reasons.&#8221;
And indeed it would be a security risk if files from the
user&#8217;s disk were submitted without the user&#8217;s content.
It might be all too
easy to lure some users into submitting some password files! But in fact
<a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1867.html" title="Form-based File Upload in HTML">RFC&nbsp;1867</a> duly notifies this problem; in section
<cite>8&nbsp;Security Considerations</cite> it says:</p>
<blockquote>
It is important that a user agent not send any file that the user has
not explicitly asked to be sent. Thus, HTML interpreting agents are
expected to confirm any default file names that might be suggested
with <code>&lt;INPUT TYPE=file VALUE="yyyy"&gt;</code>.
</blockquote>
<p><small>It also mentions (in section 3.4) that the use of <code>value</code>
&#8220;is probably platform dependent&#8221; but then goes on:
&#8220;It might
be useful, however, in sequences of more than one transaction, e.g.,
to avoid having the user prompted for the same file name over and
over again.&#8221; This isn&#8217;t particularly logical, since how would the
name be passed from one submission to another? (The mechanism for
<a href="#name">getting the original file name</a> would be quite unreliable for such
purposes.)
A more useful application could be this: Assume that your form is for
reporting a problem with a particular program, say Emacs, and
that program uses a configuration file with some specific name, say
<code>.emacs</code>, so that you would very much like to get the user&#8217;s
config file for problem analysis. Setting the default name, if supported
by the browser, might be an extra convenience to the user.</small></p>
<p>Thus, they <em>just failed to implement it</em>, for no good
reason. This isn&#8217;t a very important flaw, however. The situations
where it would make sense to suggest a default file name are rare.</p>
<p><small>
Netscape&#8217;s old <!--a href=
"http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/htmlguid/index.htm"-->
<cite>HTML Tag Reference</cite> says, in
<a href="http://devedge.netscape.com/library/manuals/1998/htmlguide/tags10.html#1312487">the description of <code>input type="file"</code></a>,
that &#8220;<code>VALUE=</code><var>filename</var>
specifies the initial value of the input element,&#8221; but
no actual support to this in Netscape browsers has been reported.
Similar considerations apply to the
<a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/objects/INPUT_file.asp" title="input type=file in Microsoft&#8217;s HTML reference">corresponding item</a>
in Microsoft&#8217;s
<a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/html/reference/elements.asp"><cite>HTML Elements</cite></a> reference.
It additionally messes things up by describing the <em>intended</em>
meaning wrong: &#8220;Sets or retrieves the value of the
<code>&lt;INPUT type=file&gt;</code>.&#8221; The description links to
<a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/properties/value_1.asp">a description of the <code>value</code> attribute</a> which says:
&#8220;The value, a file name, typed by the user into the control.
Unlike other controls, this value is read-only.&#8221; This probably
relates to using the <code>value</code> <em>property</em> in
<a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/forms/javascript.html#scripting-gen">client-side scripting</a>.
And in fact, one can read the value in JavaScript
(and get the filename entered by the user)
but setting it is unsuccessful (without an error message); the same applies
to Netscape (but on Opera, even an attempt to read the value seems
to confuse the browser).
Note that the <em>examples</em> in the above-mentioned documentation
do not contain an <code>input type="file"</code> element with
a <code>value</code> attribute.</small></p>
<p>
However,
<a href="#opera">support to file input in several versions of Opera</a>
handles the <code>value</code>
attribute in the following way:
</p><ul class="emb">
<li> the value is displayed in the box for file name input
</li><li> that value can be edited by the user (as an <em>alternative</em>
to using the Browse menu, which changes the content of that box)
</li><li> however if the user submits the form so that the initial value
has not been changed by the user, there will be a security alert and
the user is requested to confirm the submission.
</li><li> there does not seem to be any working
way to specify a <em>set</em> of files
in the <code>value</code> attribute.
</li></ul>
<p>Such support, however, is absent in Opera 7.54, for some reason.</p><p>
</p><p>The following form contains a file input field with
<code>value="C:\.emacs"</code>. Your browser probably just ignores
that attribute, but some browsers may use it to set the initial
file name:</p>
<form action="http://www.cs.tut.fi/cgi-bin/run/~jkorpela/echo.cgi" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">
<div><input name="datafile" value="C:\.emacs" type="file"></div>
<div><input value="Send" type="submit"></div>
</form>
<p>An example of Opera&#8217;s security alert in the situation discussed above:
<br>
<img src="test_arquivos/opalert.gif" title="Screenshot" alt="! The files listed below have been selected, without your
intervention, to be sent to another computer. Do you want to
send these files?
Destination&nbsp;&nbsp;http://yucca.hut.fi/cgi-bin/sendback.pl
Form URL&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;http://www.hut.fi/u/jkorpela/forms/filedemo.html
C:\emacs
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;OK&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cancel&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Help" height="263" width="391">
</p><p><small>There was a short-time bug in Opera 6 that created
a security hole, which would have let authors grab users&#8217; files
without their knowing, i.e. bypassing the dialogue
described above.</small></p>
<h3><a name="name">Getting the original name</a></h3>
<p>
<a href="#rfc" title="The status of RFC 1867">RFC 1867</a> says:
</p><blockquote cite="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1867.html">
<p>The original local file name may be supplied as well, either as a
&#8216;filename&#8217; parameter either of the &#8216;content-disposition: form-data&#8217;
header or in the case of multiple files in a &#8216;content-disposition:
file&#8217; header of the subpart. The client application should make best
effort to supply the file name; if the file name of the client&#8217;s
operating system is not in US-ASCII, the file name might be
approximated or encoded using the method of
<a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1522.html" title="MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) Part Two: Message Header Extensions for Non-ASCII Text">RFC&nbsp;1522</a>. This is a
convenience for those cases where, for example, the uploaded files
might contain references to each other, e.g., a TeX file and its .sty
auxiliary style description.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But note that this appears in
subsection 3.3 of section <cite>3.&nbsp;Suggested
Implementatation</cite>.
Thus, it is <strong>only a recommendation</strong> related
to one <strong>possible</strong> implementation.
You shouldn&#8217;t count on having a
<code>filename</code>
included.</p>
<p>It seems that Netscape, IE, and Opera actually
include the <code>filename</code> parameter.
However, only Opera uses the format which
seems to be the <em>intended</em> one,
as deduced from the examples in
<a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1867.html" title="Form-based File Upload in HTML">RFC&nbsp;1867</a>
(section&nbsp;6),
namely a <em>relative</em> name like
<code>foo.txt</code>, not a full pathname like
<code>C:\mydocs\foo.txt</code>.
Internet Explorer&nbsp;7 beta preview behaves similarly,
and this has been explained as a security improvement.</p>
<p><small>Is the Netscape and IE behavior really incorrect? Well,
since most computers have some sort of path name system for file names,
one would expect to see path names in examples if the intent had been
that path names are sent.
This is consistent with the fact that in order to actually
<em>use</em> the file names for some meaningful purpose
(like the one mentioned in
<a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1867.html" title="Form-based File Upload in HTML">RFC&nbsp;1867</a>:
&#8220;the
uploaded file might contain references to each other, e.g.,
a TeX file and its .sty auxiliary style description,&#8221;
which clearly calls for <em>relative</em> file names).
When path names are sent, things get much more complicated,
since their specific syntax (and interpretation)
is strongly system-specific, and there is even no provision for
telling the server what the browser&#8217;s file system is.
Sending relative names only is also consistent with elementary
security considerations: avoid sending information about the
user&#8217;s file system structure.
Note that the security section of
<a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1867.html" title="Form-based File Upload in HTML">RFC&nbsp;1867</a>
does not mention any problems that might arise from that;
this more or less proves that browsers were
<em>not</em> expected to send path names.</small></p>
<p>
The idea of including a <code>filename</code> attribute
makes sense of course, and would apply e.g. to a file
submission containing a set of HTML documents referring to each other
with relative URLs.
However, it&#8217;s clear that the processing script
would need to strip off the path part of the names (which is in
principle risky since
<code>C:\mydocs\foo.txt</code>
could be a relative filename
on many systems!). Moreover, since the <a href="#multi">submission of several files</a> is
currently clumsy at best, the idea would be of limited usefulness even
when it works. (Collections of files that refer to each other by names
would be best handled as packaged into formats such as
<code>application/zip</code>, leaving the file name issue to be handled
by zipping and unzipping programs, which can preserve relative names as
well as relative directory structures.)</p>
<h3><a name="size">The <code>size</code> attribute</a></h3>
<p>Although the user is not expected to type the filename(s) into
a filename box but use the Browse function,
the size of the box matters. When the user selects a file by
clicking on it, the browser puts the filename into the filename box,
and the name is a full pathname which can be quite long.
It may confuse users if they see the name badly truncated.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32#input">Definition of
<code>input type="file"</code> in the HTML 3.2 specification</a>
said:</p>
<blockquote>
<div>Just like [for] <code>type=text</code> you can use the
<code>size</code> attribute to set the visible width of this field
in average character widths.</div>
</blockquote>
<p>
And most browsers seem to treat the <code>size</code> attribute
that way. <!--Opera 3.60 ignores the attribute.-->
</p><p>
But the HTML 4.01 specification
<a href="http://www.w3.org/html4/interact/forms.html#adef-size-INPUT">defines the <code>size</code> attribute for an <code>input</code>
element</a> as follows:
</p><blockquote>
This attribute tells the user agent the initial width of the control. The width is given in pixels except when
<code>type</code> attribute has the value
<code>"text"</code>
or
<code>"password"</code>.
In that case, its value refers to the (integer) number of characters.
</blockquote>
<p>This logically implies that for <code>input type="file"</code>,
the <code>size</code> attribute specifies the width in pixels,
not characters.
This is probably an oversight, and
the risk of a browser acting literally according it
is ignorable.</p>
<p>On the other hand, you could
<a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/styles/howto.html" title="How to use style sheets (suggested material and procedures)">use style sheets</a> in addition to the <code>size</code> attribute.
Using e.g. the attribute
<code>style="<a href="http://www.htmlhelp.org/reference/css/box/width.html" title="Description of the width property in CSS1">width</a>:25em"</code>
could override the <code>size</code> attribute; this currently seems to happen
on IE 4 and newer only, but it should do no harm on browsers which don&#8217;t
support it.
However note that although it might seem attractive to use
<code>style="width:100%"</code>, asking the browser use as wide a box as
possible, there&#8217;s the problem that at least IE 4 puts the Browse button
on the same line as the box. Thus you would in effect force horizontal
scrolling! Something like <code>style="width:80%"</code>
would be better, though it is just a guess that the box and the button
will then usually fit.
</p>
<h3><a name="restr">Setting restrictions on the file size</a></h3>
<p>Especially if &#8220;file upload&#8221; means storing the file on the server&#8217;s
disk, it is necessary to consider imposing various restrictions.
It would be nasty if some user filled the disk with gigabytes of junk,
by ignorance, or by misclicking, or by malevolence.
See section
<cite><a href="http://cpan.uwinnipeg.ca/htdocs/CGI.pm/CGI.html#avoiding_denial_of_service_attacks">Avoiding Denial of Service Attacks</a></cite> in the
<a href="http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/CPAN/data/CGI.pm/CGI.html">documentation of CGI.pm</a>; even if it isn&#8217;t directly applicable
to you since you use other techniques than CGI and Perl, it
gives some food for thought in general.</p>
<p>The server-side form handler can be coded to do whatever the
programmer wants, and imposing <em>some</em> upper limit is clearly a must.
(That is, the code should check for the input size, and discard, or
otherwise process in a special way, submissions exceeding a reasonable limit.)
</p><p>
Any client-side restrictions, i.e.
checks done by a browser prior to form submission,
are unreliable and should be considered
as extra comfort to <em>users</em> only&#8212;so that they get a rejection
message earlier.
</p><p>
<a name="maxlength" href="#rfc" title="The status of RFC 1867">RFC 1867</a> says:
</p><blockquote>
If the <code>INPUT</code> tag includes the attribute <code>MAXLENGTH</code>, the
user agent should consider its value to represent the maximum
<code>Content-Length</code> (in bytes) which the server will accept for transferred
files.
</blockquote>
<p>It appears that no browser has even tried to implement
that, and there&#8217;s no statement about such a feature in HTML
specifications. On the contrary, the
<a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32#input">HTML 3.2 specification says</a> something quite different:
</p><blockquote>
You can set an upper limit to the length of file names using the
<code>maxlength</code> attribute.
</blockquote>
<p>Thus, it is better not to use the <code>maxlength</code> attribute,
because it currently does nothing and, worse still,
in the future it might be interpreted in two incompatible ways.
The HTML&nbsp;4 specification takes no position on this: it describes
<code>maxlength</code> as defined for <code>input type="text"</code>
and <code>input type="password"</code> only.</p>
<h3><a name="filter">Filtering (through a file type filter)</a></h3>
<p><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#adef-accept">The HTML 4.01 specification defines an <code>accept</code> attribute</a>
for use with <code>input type="file"</code> as follows:
</p><blockquote>
<div>This attribute specifies a comma-separated list of content types
that a server processing this form will handle correctly. User agents
may use this information to filter out non-conforming files when
prompting a user to select files to be sent to the server.
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Thus you could specify, for example,
<code>accept="image/gif,image/jpeg"</code>, if you are willing to get
image files in GIF or JPEG format only.
Browsers <em>might</em> use this information to set up the Browse menu
so that only such files are selectable, at least initially.
And
<a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32#input">the HTML 3.2 specification even claims</a>:
&#8220;Some user agents support the ability to restrict the kinds of files
to those matching a comma separated list of MIME content types given
with the <code>ACCEPT</code> attribute[;]
e.g. <code>accept="image/*"</code> restricts files to images.&#8221;
(Note that <code>"image/*"</code> is not a MIME content type. Obviously
the intent is that some
<a href="http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?query=wildcard" title="A generic loose definition of &quot;wild card&quot;">&#8220;wildcarding&#8221;</a> could be applied, but there doesn&#8217;t seem
to be any definition about that.)
</p><p>
But it seems that browser support is currently nonexistent.
No filtering is applied, except <a href="#netscape">on Netscape&nbsp;4</a>
which initially
sets
a filter which restricts selectability to HTML documents, no matter
what there is in an <code>accept</code> attribute!
And even if there were support, you of course couldn&#8217;t <em>rely</em> on
such filtering, for many reasons.
If it worked, it would be basically for user comfort, not for setting
effective restrictions (which must be imposed by the form handler).</p>
<p>Using
<a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/forms/javascript.html#scripting-gen">client-side scripting</a>,
you might help some users so that they won&#8217;t submit data of
wrong type.
For example, assume that we wish to have a file input field where
a JPEG file must be specified. And we might take the simplistic
view that this means a file name which ends with <code>jpg</code>,
and check, in a client-side script, that the value of the field
matches that.
Note that the value is the filename, not the file content.
However one must be <strong class="warning">extra careful</strong> here.
Although the
<a href="http://www.irt.org/articles/js058/" title="Events and Event Handlers">event attributes</a>
<code>onfocus</code>, <code>onchange</code> and <code>onblur</code>
for <code>input type="file"</code>
are supported even in earliest JavaScript implementations
(from version 1.0), there are limitations and problems.
In particular, <code>onblur</code> seems to be treated strangely,
and the obvious idea&#8212;associate checking code with
<code>onblur</code>&#8212;seems to make Netscape run in an eternal
loop. Thus, it is probably best to
<strong>associate the checks with file submission only</strong>.
This means using the <code>onsubmit</code> attribute in the
<code>form</code> tag.
<a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/forms/filecheck.html" title="The example as a separate document">Example</a>:
</p><pre><code class="html">&lt;script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript"&gt;
function check() {
var ext = document.f.pic.value;
ext = ext.substring(ext.length-3,ext.length);
ext = ext.toLowerCase();
if(ext != 'jpg') {
alert('You selected a .'+ext+
' file; please select a .jpg file instead!');
return false; }
else
return true; }
&lt;/script&gt;
&lt;form method="post" name=f
enctype="multipart/form-data"
onsubmit="return check();"
action="http://www.cs.tut.fi/cgi-bin/run/~jkorpela/echo.cgi"&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
Please select a JPEG (.jpg) file to be sent:
&lt;br&gt;
&lt;input type="file" name="pic" size="40"
accept="image/jpeg"&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
Please include a short explanation:&lt;br&gt;
&lt;textarea name="expl" rows="3" cols="40"
onfocus="check();"&gt;
&lt;/textarea&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
&lt;input type="submit" value="Send"&gt;
&lt;/form&gt;</code></pre>
<h3><a name="rfc">The status of RFC 1867</a></h3>
<p>
The status of the original description of
<code>input type="file"</code>, namely
<a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1867.html">RFC 1867</a>,
<cite>Form-based File Upload in HTML</cite>, is vague.
The <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4">HTML 4.01 specification</a>
makes only an
<a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/references.html#h-1.2"><em>informative</em> reference</a>
to it, and mentions a &#8220;work in progress&#8221; in this area:<br>
<small><code>ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-masinter-form-data-01.txt</code></small>
<br>
This is however outdated information; the URL does not work, and
the draft has expired.
There does not seem to be anything else even at the level of
<a href="http://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/cgi-bin/search/standard/nph-findstd" title="Internet Standards Archive [incl. Internet-Drafts]">Internet-Drafts</a> to replace RFC 1867.
There is however
<a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2388.html">RFC&nbsp;2388</a>,
<cite>Returning Values from Forms: multipart/form-data</cite>
which might be related to the process. However it is not
specified to obsolete RFC 1867.
</p>
<p>
In the
<a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/">
<cite>HTML 4.01 Specification</cite></a>,
the <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html40/references.html#h-1.2">informative references</a> have been updated so that a reference
is made to RFC&nbsp;2388, with a note &#8220;Refer also to RFC&nbsp;1867.&#8221;
</p>
<p>In June 2000, <a href="ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2854.txt">RFC 2854</a>, <cite>The 'text/html' Media Type</cite>, was issued.
It&#8217;s basic purpose was to &#8220;to remove HTML from IETF Standards Track&#8221;
officially, i.e. to make it explicit that work on HTML specifications
has been moved from IETF to W3C. It explicitly obsoletes RFC 1867,
together with some other HTML related RFCs. But note that there is
very little in HTML specifications by the W3C that defines
what file input really is; they refer to RFC 1867 instead.</p>
<p>RFC 1867 contains much more <strong>detailed</strong> information about
&#8220;file upload&#8221; than HTML specifications. It explains the original
idea and how it might be implemented. However, its normative
status is vague,
and the implementations are still wanting,
so you should generally <em>not</em> expect browsers to support
the idea very well.</p>
<hr title="Information about this document">
<div class="footer">
<div><a title="ISO 8601, the date and time representation standard" href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/iso8601.html">
Date</a> of creation: 1999 (?). Last revision: 2004-11-13.
Last modification: 2008-03-21.</div>
<div>This page belongs to division
<cite><a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/www.html">Web authoring and surfing</a></cite>,
subdivision
<cite><a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/forms/index.html" title="How to write HTML forms; links to tutorials and references and documents on special topics related to forms">Forms</a></cite> in
the free information site
<cite><a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/indexen.html">IT and communication</a></cite>
by
<a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/personal.html" title="Jukka K. Korpela, an IT generalist and specialist (personal home page)"><span lang="fi">Jukka</span> &#8220;Yucca&#8221; <span lang="fi">Korpela</span></a>.
</div></div>
</body></html>
\ No newline at end of file
...@@ -37,6 +37,7 @@ from zipfile import ZipFile, is_zipfile ...@@ -37,6 +37,7 @@ from zipfile import ZipFile, is_zipfile
from cloudooo.tests.cloudoooTestCase import TestCase from cloudooo.tests.cloudoooTestCase import TestCase
from unittest import expectedFailure from unittest import expectedFailure
import magic import magic
import xmlrpc.client
from cloudooo.handler.ooo.tests.testOooMimemapper import text_expected_tuple, presentation_expected_tuple from cloudooo.handler.ooo.tests.testOooMimemapper import text_expected_tuple, presentation_expected_tuple
...@@ -686,3 +687,15 @@ class TestCSVEncoding(TestCase): ...@@ -686,3 +687,15 @@ class TestCSVEncoding(TestCase):
self.assertEqual( self.assertEqual(
[], [],
[x.text for x in tree.getroot().findall('.//td')]) [x.text for x in tree.getroot().findall('.//td')])
class TestInvalidFile(TestCase):
"""cloudoo should refuse potentially unsafe files."""
def test_with_link(self):
for ext in ('odt', 'ods', 'odp', 'odg', 'html'):
with open('./data/with_link.%s' % ext, 'rb') as f:
data = encodebytes(f.read()).decode()
self.assertRaisesRegex(
xmlrpc.client.Fault,
'This document contains unsafe links .*',
self.proxy.convertFile, data, ext, 'pdf'
)
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