: In traditional HTML, the process of uploading a file is to land on a web page that contains a text box along with a button next to it named "choose" or "browse" or whatever name your browser

In traditional HTML, the process of uploading a file is to land on a web page that contains a text box along with a button next to it named "choose" or "browse" or whatever name your browser decides to give it. The box by itself is not expected to hold millions of characters. It just merely holds the name of the local file to be uploaded. This name can then be set/changed simply by choosing the adjacent button and selecting a new file in the file selection box that appears.

Once the upload button is pressed, then all data is "post"ed. This means instead of seeing millions of characters in the address bar, the characters (including all the characters that make up the file) directly get sent to the server right after the initial headers (hence POST).

Because the data type is multipart/form-data, the data sent to the server will likely be chunked and the data might have separators set in between so the server knows what is in each section of the long uploaded data.

As for handling, the server will need to execute some kind of script to actually process the file. Even PHP scripts can handle large uploaded files. The file would most likely be moved from the temporary location (where it's uploaded to) into the user's folder.

10% popularity Vote Up Vote Down