Google’s GMail has a nice way of allowing you to add multiple attachments to an email.
Rather than showing you 10 file upload boxes at once, the user attaches a file, you can click a button to add another attachment. I had a client request this functionality in an app I am building for them today, and it was pretty easy to implement.
Here’s the code:
<input type="file" name="attachment" id="attachment" onchange="document.getElementById('moreUploadsLink').style.display = 'block';" />
<div id="moreUploads"></div>
<div id="moreUploadsLink" style="display:none;"><a href="javascript:addFileInput();">Attach another File</a></div>
And now here’s the javascript function to add another input box:
var upload_number = 2;
function addFileInput() {
var d = document.createElement("div");
var file = document.createElement("input");
file.setAttribute("type", "file");
file.setAttribute("name", "attachment"+upload_number);
d.appendChild(file);
document.getElementById("moreUploads").appendChild(d);
upload_number++;
}
Google also does something else that is pretty slick in Gmail with their attachment uploads – they appear to upload the file using AJAX. So you can type your email while your files are uploading. Perhaps I’ll look into doing that in a future blog entry.
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Pete Freitag (http://www.petefreitag.com/) is a software engineer, and
web developer located in central new york. Pete specializes in the
HTTP protocol, web services, xml, java, and coldfusion. In 2003 Pete
published the ColdFusion MX Developers Cookbook with SAMs Publishing.
Pete owns a Firm called Foundeo (http://foundeo.com/) that specializes
in Web Consulting, and Products for Web Developers.
