As per FastAPI documentation:
You can declare multiple Form parameters in a path operation, but you
can't also declare Body fields that you expect to receive as JSON, as
the request will have the body encoded using
application/x-www-form-urlencoded instead of application/json (when the form includes files, it is encoded as multipart/form-data).
This is not a limitation of FastAPI, it's part of the HTTP protocol.
Note that you need to have python-multipart installed first—if you haven't already—since uploaded files are sent as "form data". For instance:
pip install python-multipart
It should also be noted that in the examples below, the endpoints are defined with normal def, but you could also use async def (depending on your needs). Please have a look at this answer for more details on def vs async def in FastAPI.
Method 1
As described here, one can define files and form fileds at the same time using File and Form. Below is a working example. In case you had a large number of parameters and would like to define them separately from the endpoint, please have a look at this answer on how to create a custom dependency class instead.
app.py
from fastapi import Form, File, UploadFile, Request, FastAPI
from typing import List
from fastapi.responses import HTMLResponse
from fastapi.templating import Jinja2Templates
app = FastAPI()
templates = Jinja2Templates(directory="templates")
@app.post("/submit")
def submit(
name: str = Form(...),
point: float = Form(...),
is_accepted: bool = Form(...),
files: List[UploadFile] = File(...),
):
return {
"JSON Payload ": {"name": name, "point": point, "is_accepted": is_accepted},
"Filenames": [file.filename for file in files],
}
@app.get("/", response_class=HTMLResponse)
def main(request: Request):
return templates.TemplateResponse("index.html", {"request": request})
You can test the above example by accessing the template below at http://127.0.0.1:8000. If your template does not include any Jinja code, you could alternatively return a simple HTMLResponse.
templates/index.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<form method="post" action="http://127.0.0.1:8000/submit" enctype="multipart/form-data">
name : <input type="text" name="name" value="foo"><br>
point : <input type="text" name="point" value=0.134><br>
is_accepted : <input type="text" name="is_accepted" value=True><br>
<label for="file">Choose files to upload</label>
<input type="file" id="files" name="files" multiple>
<input type="submit" value="submit">
</form>
</body>
</html>
You can also test it using the interactive OpenAPI docs (provided by Swagger UI) at http://127.0.0.1:8000/docs, or Python requests, as shown below:
test.py
import requests
url = 'http://127.0.0.1:8000/submit'
files = [('files', open('test_files/a.txt', 'rb')), ('files', open('test_files/b.txt', 'rb'))]
payload ={"name": "foo", "point": 0.13, "is_accepted": False}
resp = requests.post(url=url, data=payload, files=files)
print(resp.json())
Method 2
One can use Pydantic models, along with Dependencies to inform the "submit" route (in the case below) that the parameterised variable base depends on the Base class. Please note, this method expects the base data as query (not body) parameters (which are then converted into an equivalent JSON payload using .dict() method) and the Files as multipart/form-data in the body.
app.py
from fastapi import Form, File, UploadFile, Request, FastAPI, Depends
from typing import List
from fastapi.responses import HTMLResponse
from pydantic import BaseModel
from typing import Optional
from fastapi.templating import Jinja2Templates
app = FastAPI()
templates = Jinja2Templates(directory="templates")
class Base(BaseModel):
name: str
point: Optional[float] = None
is_accepted: Optional[bool] = False
@app.post("/submit")
def submit(base: Base = Depends(), files: List[UploadFile] = File(...)):
return {
"JSON Payload ": base.dict(),
"Filenames": [file.filename for file in files],
}
@app.get("/", response_class=HTMLResponse)
def main(request: Request):
return templates.TemplateResponse("index.html", {"request": request})
Again, you can test it using the template below, which, this time, uses Javascript to modify the action attribute of the form, in order to pass the form data as query params to the URL.
templates/index.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<form method="post" id="myForm" onclick="transformFormData();" enctype="multipart/form-data">
name : <input type="text" name="name" value="foo"><br>
point : <input type="text" name="point" value=0.134><br>
is_accepted : <input type="text" name="is_accepted" value=True><br>
<label for="file">Choose files to upload</label>
<input type="file" id="files" name="files" multiple>
<input type="submit" value="submit">
</form>
<script>
function transformFormData(){
var myForm = document.getElementById('myForm');
var qs = new URLSearchParams(new FormData(myForm)).toString();
myForm.action = 'http://127.0.0.1:8000/submit?' + qs;
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
As mentioned earlier you can also use Swagger UI, or Python requests, as shown in the example below. Note that this time, the payload is passed to the params parameter of requests.post(), as you submit query parameters, not form-data (body) params, which was the case in the previous method.
test.py
import requests
url = 'http://127.0.0.1:8000/submit'
files = [('files', open('test_files/a.txt', 'rb')), ('files', open('test_files/b.txt', 'rb'))]
payload ={"name": "foo", "point": 0.13, "is_accepted": False}
resp = requests.post(url=url, params=payload, files=files)
print(resp.json())
Method 3
Another option would be to pass the body data as a single parameter (of type Form) in the form of a JSON string. On server side, you can create a dependency function, where you parse the data using parse_raw method and validate the data against the corresponding model. If ValidationError is raised, an HTTP_422_UNPROCESSABLE_ENTITY error is sent back to the client, including the error message. Example is given below:
app.py
from fastapi import FastAPI, status, Form, UploadFile, File, Depends, Request
from pydantic import BaseModel, ValidationError
from fastapi.exceptions import HTTPException
from fastapi.encoders import jsonable_encoder
from typing import Optional, List
from fastapi.templating import Jinja2Templates
from fastapi.responses import HTMLResponse
app = FastAPI()
templates = Jinja2Templates(directory="templates")
class Base(BaseModel):
name: str
point: Optional[float] = None
is_accepted: Optional[bool] = False
def checker(data: str = Form(...)):
try:
model = Base.parse_raw(data)
except ValidationError as e:
raise HTTPException(
detail=jsonable_encoder(e.errors()),
status_code=status.HTTP_422_UNPROCESSABLE_ENTITY,
)
return model
@app.post("/submit")
def submit(model: Base = Depends(checker), files: List[UploadFile] = File(...)):
return {"JSON Payload ": model, "Filenames": [file.filename for file in files]}
@app.get("/", response_class=HTMLResponse)
def main(request: Request):
return templates.TemplateResponse("index.html", {"request": request})
In case you had multiple models and would like to avoid creating a checker function for each model, you could instead create a checker class, as described in the documentation, and have a dictionary of your models that you can use to look up for a model to parse. Example:
# ...
models = {"base": Base, "other": SomeOtherModel}
class DataChecker:
def __init__(self, name: str):
self.name = name
def __call__(self, data: str = Form(...)):
try:
model = models[self.name].parse_raw(data)
except ValidationError as e:
raise HTTPException(
detail=jsonable_encoder(e.errors()),
status_code=status.HTTP_422_UNPROCESSABLE_ENTITY,
)
return model
base_checker = DataChecker("base")
other_checker = DataChecker("other")
@app.post("/submit")
def submit(model: Base = Depends(base_checker), files: List[UploadFile] = File(...)):
# ...
test.py
Note that in JSON, boolean values are represented using the true or false literals in lower case, whereas in Python they must be capitalised as either True or False.
import requests
url = 'http://127.0.0.1:8000/submit'
files = [('files', open('test_files/a.txt', 'rb')), ('files', open('test_files/b.txt', 'rb'))]
data = {'data': '{"name": "foo", "point": 0.13, "is_accepted": false}'}
resp = requests.post(url=url, data=data, files=files)
print(resp.json())
Or, if you prefer:
import requests
import json
url = 'http://127.0.0.1:8000/submit'
files = [('files', open('test_files/a.txt', 'rb')), ('files', open('test_files/b.txt', 'rb'))]
data = {'data': json.dumps({"name": "foo", "point": 0.13, "is_accepted": False})}
resp = requests.post(url=url, data=data, files=files)
print(resp.json())
Test using Fetch API or Axios
templates/index.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/axios/0.27.2/axios.min.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<input type="file" id="fileInput" name="file" multiple><br>
<input type="button" value="Submit using fetch" onclick="submitUsingFetch()">
<input type="button" value="Submit using axios" onclick="submitUsingAxios()">
<script>
function submitUsingFetch() {
var fileInput = document.getElementById('fileInput');
if (fileInput.files[0]) {
var formData = new FormData();
formData.append("data", JSON.stringify({"name": "foo", "point": 0.13, "is_accepted": false}));
for (const file of fileInput.files)
formData.append('files', file);
fetch('/submit', {
method: 'POST',
body: formData,
})
.then(response => {
console.log(response);
})
.catch(error => {
console.error(error);
});
}
}
function submitUsingAxios() {
var fileInput = document.getElementById('fileInput');
if (fileInput.files[0]) {
var formData = new FormData();
formData.append("data", JSON.stringify({"name": "foo", "point": 0.13, "is_accepted": false}));
for (const file of fileInput.files)
formData.append('files', file);
axios({
method: 'POST',
url: '/submit',
data: formData,
})
.then(response => {
console.log(response);
})
.catch(error => {
console.error(error);
});
}
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
Method 4
A further method comes from the discussion here, and incorporates a custom class with a classmethod used to transform a given JSON string into a Python dictionary, which is then used for validation against the Pydantic model. Similar to Method 3 above, the input data should be passed as a single Form parameter in the form of JSON string (defining the parameter with Body type would also work and still expect the JSON string as form data, as in this case the data comes encoded as multipart/form-data). Thus, the same test.py file(s) and index.html template from the previous method can be used for testing the below.
app.py
from fastapi import FastAPI, File, Body, UploadFile, Request
from pydantic import BaseModel
from typing import Optional, List
from fastapi.templating import Jinja2Templates
from fastapi.responses import HTMLResponse
import json
app = FastAPI()
templates = Jinja2Templates(directory="templates")
class Base(BaseModel):
name: str
point: Optional[float] = None
is_accepted: Optional[bool] = False
@classmethod
def __get_validators__(cls):
yield cls.validate_to_json
@classmethod
def validate_to_json(cls, value):
if isinstance(value, str):
return cls(**json.loads(value))
return value
@app.post("/submit")
def submit(data: Base = Body(...), files: List[UploadFile] = File(...)):
return {"JSON Payload ": data, "Filenames": [file.filename for file in files]}
@app.get("/", response_class=HTMLResponse)
def main(request: Request):
return templates.TemplateResponse("index.html", {"request": request})
Method 5
Another solution would be to convert the file bytes into a base64-format string and add it to the JSON object, along with other data that you might want to send over to the server. I would not strongly recommend using this approach; however, it has been added to this answer as a further option for the sake of completeness.
The reason I would not suggest using it is because encoding file(s) using base64 would essentially increase the size of the file, and hence, increase bandwidth utilisation, as well as the time and resources (e.g., CPU usage) required to upload the file (especially, when the API is going to be used by multiple users at the same time), as base64 encoding and decoding would need to take place on client and server side, respectively (could only be useful for very tiny images). As per MDN's documentation:
Each Base64 digit represents exactly 6 bits of data. So, three 8-bits
bytes of the input string/binary file (3×8 bits = 24 bits) can be
represented by four 6-bit Base64 digits (4×6 = 24 bits).
This means that the Base64 version of a string or file will be at
least 133% the size of its source (a ~33% increase). The increase
may be larger if the encoded data is small. For example, the string
"a" with length === 1 gets encoded to "YQ==" with length === 4
— a 300% increase.
Using this approach, which again I would not recommend for the reasons explained above, you need to make sure to define the endpoint with normal def, as base64.b64decode() performs a blocking operation that would block the event loop. Otherwise, to use async def endpoint, you could execute the decoding function in an external ThreadPool or ProcessPool (see this answer), as well as use aiofiles to write the file to disk (see this answer).
The example below provides test client code in Python requests and JavaScript as well.
app.py
from fastapi import FastAPI, Request, HTTPException
from typing import List
from fastapi.responses import HTMLResponse
from pydantic import BaseModel
from fastapi.templating import Jinja2Templates
import base64
import binascii
app = FastAPI()
templates = Jinja2Templates(directory='templates')
class Bas64File(BaseModel):
filename: str
owner: str
bas64_str: str
@app.post('/submit')
def submit(files: List[Bas64File]):
for file in files:
try:
contents = base64.b64decode(file.bas64_str.encode('utf-8'))
with open(file.filename, 'wb') as f:
f.write(contents)
except base64.binascii.Error as e:
raise HTTPException(
400, detail='There was an error decoding the base64 string'
)
except Exception:
raise HTTPException(
500, detail='There was an error uploading the file(s)'
)
return {'Filenames': [file.filename for file in files]}
@app.get('/', response_class=HTMLResponse)
def main(request: Request):
return templates.TemplateResponse('index.html', {'request': request})
test.py
import requests
import os
import glob
import base64
url = 'http://127.0.0.1:8000/submit'
paths = glob.glob('files/*', recursive=True)
data = []
for p in paths:
with open(p, 'rb') as f:
bas64_str = base64.b64encode(f.read()).decode('utf-8')
data.append({'filename': os.path.basename(p), 'owner': 'me', 'bas64_str': bas64_str})
resp = requests.post(url=url, json=data)
print(resp.json())
templates/index.html
<input type="file" id="fileInput" onchange="base64Handler()" multiple><br>
<script>
async function base64Handler() {
var fileInput = document.getElementById('fileInput');
var data = [];
for (const file of fileInput.files) {
var dict = {};
dict.filename = file.name;
dict.owner = 'me';
base64String = await this.toBase64(file);
dict.bas64_str = base64String.replace("data:", "").replace(/^.+,/, "");
data.push(dict);
}
uploadFiles(data);
}
function toBase64(file) {
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
const reader = new FileReader();
reader.readAsDataURL(file);
reader.onload = () => resolve(reader.result);
reader.onerror = error => reject(error);
});
};
function uploadFiles(data) {
fetch('/submit', {
method: 'POST',
headers: {
'Content-Type': 'application/json'
},
body: JSON.stringify(data)
})
.then(response => {
console.log(response);
})
.catch(error => {
console.error(error);
});
}
</script>
