How do I save a file uploaded from dashboard locally in Node-RED?

I have simple form in the dashboard that lets me select and upload a file.

<form action="/save-csv" id="convert" method="POST" enctype="multipart/form-data">
    <div class="form-group">
        <label style="font-weight: 500">
            Select CSV file:
        </label>
        <div class="custom-file">
            <input id="file-input" type="file" name="file" accept=".csv" onclick="this.value=null;" class="custom-file-input" />
            <label class="custom-file-label" for="file-input">- select file -</label>
        </div>
    </div>
    <div class="form-group" style="btn-orange">
        <input type="submit" class="md-raised md-button md-ink-ripple" value="Convert" style="width:100%" />
    </div>
</form>
[{"id":"b1ca907d.8b7da","type":"http in","z":"8e883159.0b4bc","name":"","url":"/save-csv","method":"post","upload":true,"swaggerDoc":"","x":220,"y":1440,"wires":[["19201004.c4496","2156a9b9.5d0d06"]]},{"id":"19201004.c4496","type":"http response","z":"8e883159.0b4bc","name":"","statusCode":"","headers":{},"x":810,"y":1440,"wires":[]},{"id":"2156a9b9.5d0d06","type":"debug","z":"8e883159.0b4bc","name":"","active":true,"tosidebar":true,"console":false,"tostatus":false,"complete":"true","targetType":"full","x":390,"y":1400,"wires":[]},{"id":"b2cc0eef.f39a6","type":"comment","z":"8e883159.0b4bc","name":"how do I save or use the file's contents here?","info":"","x":530,"y":1440,"wires":[]}]

How do I save the file uploaded using the form above locally in Node-RED?
I want it to be saved temporarily so I can feed its contents later into the flow using the file-in node.

Also, I am requested to do this using only the built-in nodes so I can't use custom nodes.
Initially, I was looking into extracting the file contents from the http request's multipart data but it seems I would need to use custom nodes to accomplish it.

I am quite new to this so I might be looking into this problem incorrectly. Any advice, suggestion, or even a completely different kind of solution is appreciated. Thank you in advance for your help.

Hi

Have you searched this forum or the flows library?

Also, do you really need to save to file if its temporary? Can you not not receive the file data & perform your operation in one go?

Hi Steve,

Thanks for looking into my problem.

Yes, I browsed the flows but unfortunately, I didn't find anything that could help.

I tried but I had trouble on how extracting the data from the http request.
Can you give me an idea on how to approach this?

Also, I have a use case where the CSV data would be super huge (150mb).
That's why I thought of saving the file temporarily so I can use the "a msg per line" output mode in the file-in node. Because if I leave it as "a single utf-8 string", Node-RED crashes due to memory issues.

That's pretty big but not huge by any standards these days (your machine likely has 150MB memory free to hold this in memory)

I would pursue this first. I don't think node-red should be crashing.

I definitely recommend you start a new thread with title like "node-red crashes when I process 150MB CSV file", post a decent description, a copy of the file (as attachment, sanitised if necessary) and a minimal copy of your flow pasted between three ticks...

```
flow pasted here
```

Also include the nodejs version
node -v the version of node-red (get that from menu top right) and info on the OS where node red runs.

I think the devs will be interested (or have an answer for you on this)

There are probably (at least) 2 flows that can help in here.


Moving on...
It would seem you have gotten the upload of file to flow working - have you tried sending payload to a file node to see if it writes a valid file?

Well if you have uploaded it, it is already taking 150MB of memory, as it doesn't upload a line at a time ...
But as long as it's there you could process it right away -

[{"id":"5b46fc1b.dda6a4","type":"http in","z":"5051cb93.cf0d34","name":"","url":"/save-csv","method":"post","upload":true,"swaggerDoc":"","x":100,"y":1040,"wires":[["c42f61e1.b1859","f8dd08e5.326d28","19a06732.623e39"]]},{"id":"c42f61e1.b1859","type":"debug","z":"5051cb93.cf0d34","name":"","active":true,"tosidebar":true,"console":false,"tostatus":false,"complete":"true","targetType":"full","x":270,"y":1000,"wires":[]},{"id":"f8dd08e5.326d28","type":"function","z":"5051cb93.cf0d34","name":"","func":"msg.payload = \"OK\\n\";\nreturn msg;","outputs":1,"noerr":0,"x":500,"y":1040,"wires":[["6fd35dd7.cb6d54"]]},{"id":"19a06732.623e39","type":"function","z":"5051cb93.cf0d34","name":"","func":"msg.payload = msg.req.files[0].buffer.toString();\nreturn msg;","outputs":1,"noerr":0,"x":190,"y":1160,"wires":[["bfa1a505.2a5148"]]},{"id":"6fd35dd7.cb6d54","type":"http response","z":"5051cb93.cf0d34","name":"","statusCode":"","headers":{},"x":690,"y":1040,"wires":[]},{"id":"bfa1a505.2a5148","type":"csv","z":"5051cb93.cf0d34","name":"","sep":",","hdrin":"","hdrout":"","multi":"one","ret":"\\n","temp":"","skip":"0","strings":true,"x":330,"y":1160,"wires":[["77840964.cbb958"]]},{"id":"77840964.cbb958","type":"debug","z":"5051cb93.cf0d34","name":"","active":true,"tosidebar":true,"console":false,"tostatus":false,"complete":"payload","targetType":"msg","x":470,"y":1160,"wires":[]}]

Now, this is just silly. :rofl:
I didn't know I can just convert the buffer to string...
I'm still new to this javascript madness. :sweat_smile:

Thank you very much for your help, dceejay and Steve-Mcl.

Well in general you can't - which is why it's left as a buffer - but in this case as we know it's text for a csv file then we can guess it is and convert it.

hey @eoliverio exactly in which dashboard node you have written this code?