Creating Forms > About form fields > Allowing visitors to upload a file to your server

Allowing visitors to upload a file to your server

In some cases the information you need from the visitors to your site may be too complicated to respond to in a text field. You may want visitors to send an entire file to your server, for example a nicely formatted resume, a graphics file, or some other document. You can set up a file field in a form to accomplish this task.

A file field looks like other text fields except it also contains a Browse button. A user can type the path to the file they're sending or use the Browse button to locate and select the document they're sending.

To use a file field, the form Method must be set to POST. Visitors post a file to the address you set up in the form's Action field.

Note: Confirm with your server's administrator that anonymous file uploads are allowed before using the file field. If you insert a file field with Dreamweaver, you must manually insert ENCTYPE="multipart/form-data" into the form tag to ensure that the file is encoded properly.

To create a file field in a form:

1	Click the form outline to select the form, then in the Property inspector set the form Method to POST.
2	Place the insertion point inside the form outline, then do one of the following:
	Choose Insert > Form Object > File Field.
	In the Objects panel's Forms category, click the Insert File Field icon.
	A file field appears in the document.
3	In the Property inspector's FileField Name field, type a name for the file field object.
4	In the Char Width field, type a number to set the maximum number of characters you want the field to display.
5	In the Max Char field, type a number to set the maximum number of characters the field will hold.