File Field Class¶

Before you can use the file browser, you need a field that the file browser knows how to work with. To create that field, you’ll use the field method:

ee()->file_field->field($field_name, $data = '', $allowed_file_dirs = 'all', $content_type = 'all')

The File Field class loads most of what you need for your file browser: javascript and css especially. What you need to do is initialize the file browser by optionally passing it two parameters:

ee()->file_field->browser($config, $endpoint_url);

The $config parameter is technically optional, but if you don’t pass it, the library will assume you’re on the Publish page and working with standard file fields and textareas. The $config parameter is an associative array that can handle five different key- value pairs:

• publish (optional): If set to TRUE, it will setup the file browsers as if you were on the publish page. If no $config parameter exists, this will be assumed. If this is set, all other key-value pairs are ignored.

• trigger: The selector representing the choose file button that will be passed to jQuery to establish an event handler.

• field_name (optional): The input field’s name that you want the results to go to. If undefined, it will assume the name is userfile

• settings (optional): JSON object defining the content type and directory ID:

  {"content_type": "all/image", "directory": "all/<directory_id>"}
  

• callback: Javascript function that will be called when an image is selected. There are two parameters available to the callback: file is an object of the selected file’s data, and field is a jQuery object representing the field from the field_name given:

  function (file, field) {
      console.log(file, field);
  }
  

When using the File Field library’s field() method to generate the file field for you, it creates two fields: one that facilitates uploading using the file browser, and one that works when Javascript is disabled. If Javascript is disabled, it will then upload the file. Either way, the validate() method will return the name of the file in an array:

ee()->file_field->validate($data, $field_name, $required = 'n');

After you’ve validated the data, you now have to format the data for use in templates:

ee()->file_field->format_data($file_name, $directory_id = 0);

This method is of more use to ExpressionEngine than anyone else, but it’s here if you need it. When you have template content that has {filedir_n}’s all over the place, you need to parse them, so the {filedir_n} tag is replaced with the actual URL:

ee()->file_field->parse_field($data);

This method parses all {filedir_n} variables within a given string ($data) and can optionally look for already encoded {filedir_n} tags (e.g. {filedir_n}):

ee()->file_field->parse_string($data);