HTML5 drop-to-upload component for React

A simple React component for "drop-to-upload" feature. Files dropped will be returned as File, ArrayBuffer, and data URI.

It supports Internet Explorer 10 and up, and all major desktop browsers. You can also check up-to-date browser compatibilities at Can I use ___?.

Why another file drop component?

Most file drop components are comprehensive and restrictive. They do all the heavylifting including file drop and HTTP POST upload. They all have good intentions. But to ensure everything works as expected, developers may need to follow their way to work, include adding specific server code.

We embrace microservices and focus on making a great, small, and simple-to-learn UI component. We believe React component should not cross the visualization border and touch any transport code.

Thus, we intentionally leave the HTTP POST upload part away from the component, for a few good reasons.

1. Select your transport. XMLHttpRequest or window.fetch, add HTTP headers, use multipart, and flexible CORS handling
2. Be creative. Dropping file means more than just upload. You could generate thumbnails, calculate MD5, open PDF, etc
3. Be flexible. Use JSZip to compress plain text files before upload

How to use

Install our package thru NPM.

npm install react-drop-to-upload

Add the following code to your React component to import the react-drop-to-upload component.

import DropToUpload from 'react-drop-to-upload';

And in the render loop, add the following JSX code to instantiate the component.

<DropToUpload
  onDrop={ this.handleDrop }
>
  Drop file here to upload
</DropToUpload>

By default, <DropToUpload> is realized as <div>, it can be modified thru the element props.

When a file is dropped, handleDrop will be triggered. For example, the following code use FormData and fetch to upload all dropped files to the server at /upload via HTTP POST.

handleDrop(files) {
  var data = new FormData();

  files.forEach((file, index) => {
    data.append('file' + index, file);
  });

  fetch('/upload', {
    method: 'POST',
    body: data
  });
}

Additionally, if onDropArrayBuffer or onDropDataURI props are specified, the file will be read as ArrayBuffer and/or data URIs, and then passed to the corresponding handlers.

In addition to ES5 build, we also provide ES6, UMD, and SystemJS builds under dist folder. We support ES6 build thru jsnext:main in package.json.

Supported props

Followings are list of props supported by the component.

Points to note

• If visualization is given when onOver is called, the visualization should be removed when either onDrop or onLeave is called. This is because onLeave will not be called when the user did drop the file
• If onDropArrayBuffer is not specified, the component will not issue any I/O operations to read the file content. This also applies to onDropDataURI
• If both onDropArrayBuffer and onDropDataURI are specified, it will read the file twice by calling FileReader.readAsArrayBuffer and FileReader.readAsDataURL simultaneously

Sample code

import React, { Component } from 'react';
import DropToUpload from 'react-drop-to-upload';

class Page extends Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);

    this.handleDrop = this.handleDrop.bind(this);
    this.handleDropArrayBuffer = this.handleDropArrayBuffer.bind(this);
    this.handleDropDataURI = this.handleDropDataURI.bind(this);
  }

  handleDrop(files) {
    console.log(files.length > 0); // true
    console.log(files[0] instanceof File); // true
  }

  handleDropArrayBuffer(arrayBuffers, files) {
    console.log(files.length > 0); // true
    console.log(files.length === arrayBuffers.length); // true
    console.log(files[0] instanceof File); // true
    console.log(arrayBuffers[0] instanceof ArrayBuffer); // true
  }

  handleDropDataURI(dataURIs, files) {
    console.log(files.length > 0); // true
    console.log(files.length === dataURIs.length); // true
    console.log(files[0] instanceof File); // true
    console.log(typeof dataURIs[0] === 'string'); // true
    console.log(/^data:(.*);(.*),/.test(dataURIs[0])); // true
  }

  render() {
    return (
      <DropToUpload
        onDrop={ this.handleDrop }
        onDropArrayBuffer={ this.handleDropArrayBuffer }
        onDropDataURI={ this.handleDropDataURI }
      >
        Drop file here to upload
      </DropToUpload>
    );
  }
}

You can find our testbed repository here.

Changelog

You can find the changelog here.

Contributions

Like us? Please star our NPM package and GitHub repository.

Don't feel quite right? Please file a wish or an issue to us.

Want to give us a hand? Please look at our issue list and submit pull requests.