Form field: upload

Modified on Wed, 26 Nov at 11:11 AM

The icon for elements of type Upload.

Functionality

Form elements of type Upload add an upload element to the form for uploading files that will be send together with the form data when the form is submitted. You can also add a label in the properties panel label of the FORMCYCLE Designer.

Properties

Overview of the standard properties

This section describes only those properties that are different from the standard.

Style

Additional base properties for upload elements, such as the image preview.

When the image preview is enabled and the user select an image, a thumbnail of that image is shown. When the user select a file other than an image, a general icon is shown.

Name	Description
Image preview	When checked, displays a thumbnail of the file the user selected. For image files this is a scaled down version of that image. For other files, a file icon is shown.
Automatic upload	When enabled, selected files are uploaded automatically in the background. This can help to reduce the time it takes to submit the form.

Constraints

The constraints let you restrict the allowed file types and the maximum file size.

Name	Description
Max. size	Maximum size for the uploaded file in kilobytes.
Extensions	Comma separated list of allowed file extensions the user may upload. Only files with the given extensions may be uploaded by users. File extenstions may start with or without a dot. For example pdf or .pdf will restrict uploads to PDF files.

Label

You can also specify a file name to be used instead of the original file name.

Name	Description
File name	When no name is specified, the uploaded file will be saved with its original name. Otherwise, this name is used for saving the file on the server.

Options

Compress images or convert uploaded files to a PDF document.

This section lets you post-process the upload. Two types of post-processing are available: image compression and PDF conversion.

Image compression

When the upload is an image, this option compresses the image according to the configured settings. This lets you reduce the file size of images.

Name	Description
Compress images	When enable, uploaded images are scaled and converted to the target format. The file that was originally uploaded is discarded, only the compressed image is saved. Should the compression fail unexpectedly (such as when the server does not support the file format), the original file is saved instead.
Max. width	The maximum width of the compressed image. The image is scaled by an amount such that this width is not exceeded. If you enter a value of 0, no restriction applies.
Max. height	The maximum height of the compressed image. The image is scaled by an amount such that this height is not exceeded. If you enter a value of 0, no restriction applies.
Format	Target format of the image. When you select automatic, the system attempts to preserve the original format of the uploaded image.

PDF conversion

8.3.0 Converts all uploads to a PDF document. This may be useful when you do not trust other types of files. Note that this feature requires uploaded files to have the correct file extension. See the content type validation feature for enforcing the the appropriate file extension.

Currently supported file types are text files, images, as well as PDF, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. The corresponding OASIS Open Document Format file types and Numbers spreadsheets are also supported. The file must have one of the following file extension to be eligible for PDF conversion:

bmp
gif
jpeg
jpg
png
svg
tif
tiff
webp
json
txt
xml
docx
doc
odt
xls
xlsx
ods
numbers
ppt
pptx
odp
pdf

Name	Description
Convert to PDF	When enabled, converts all uploads to PDF documents.
Keep original	When enabled, the original files all also saved. These files can still be seen in the inbox, but for all other purposes, the converted files are used.
Allow inconvertible	Controls how to proceed when a file cannot be converted. When enabled, files that cannot be converted are kept as-is. When disabled and any file cannot be converted, submitted forms are rejected and a validation error is displayed to the user. I.e., forms with inconvertible files cannot be submitted.

Automatic Image Preparation

8.4.0 When uploading image files, formcycle now performs the following automatic steps:

Removing EXIF metadata

All EXIF metadata (e.g., GPS coordinates, camera model or device orientation) is by default removed automatically after the upload. This is done for privacy reasons and cannot be configured or disabled.

Automatic image rotation based on EXIF orientation

Before the EXIF data is removed, the image is automatically rotated based on the orientation information. This mainly affects photos where the orientation (portrait/landscape) is not stored in the image itself but only in the EXIF data.

Die Rotation erfolgt nur, wenn gültige EXIF-Orientierungsinformationen vorhanden sind. Enthält das Bild keine solche Information, wird es nicht automatisch gedreht.

The image is rotated only if valid EXIF orientation information are available. If the image does not contain such data, it will not be rotated automatically.

There is currently no option to turn off or customize this automatic rotation.

Difference to PDF conversion

If the "Convert to PDF" option is enabled for the upload element, additional settings such as page size can be configured. However, these options apply only to the PDF generation later and do not affect the automatic image rotation during upload. In such cases, formcycle automatically detects the correct orientation and rotates the image appropriately before continuing the upload process.

What happens if an image is saved in the wrong orientation?

• With correct EXIF orientation data: the image is automatically rotated to the correct orientation.
• Without or with incorrect EXIF data: no rotation is applied – the image remains as it was saved.

If an image appears visually “upside down” even though it should be correctly oriented, this is usually because no valid EXIF orientation data are available.