Multipart Requests

This topic is only a brief overview of multipart requests; more information is available in the associated IETF RFC2046.

HTTP requests may declare their media type to be "multipart". This is accomplished by setting the Content-Type header to a MIME type whose type is multipart (for example, multipart/form-data). This indicates to the recipient that the body of the request is formatted as a series of "body parts" grouped together as a single "multipart" request. Each part starts with a boundary to indicate to the recipient the start of a new body part. The boundary is specified by setting the boundary property in the Content-Type header.

Continuing the previous example of multipart/form-data, the Content-Type header would look like multipart/form-data; boundary=MYBOUNDARY. Then, the body parts contained in the request body would appears as follows:

    --MYBOUNDARY

    This is my first body part.
    --MYBOUNDARY

    This is my second body part.
    --MYBOUNDARY--

Observe that the last boundary is prefixed by -- to indicate the start of a new body part, and that the last body part declares the end of the body by suffixing another --.

Each "body part" is similar (but not equivalent) to a normal HTTP request. It is formatted as a header area and a body area separated by a blank line. The header area is allowed to contain Content- headers, but can be left blank to indicate plain text. The body area is similar to a normal request body, except that the boundary may not appear within it - if it does, the recipient won't be able to determine the intended body parts.

Example

The following example is a complete multipart HTTP request to a non-existent URI. Our imaginary URI expects three body parts: a snippet of text, a JSON-formatted object, and a Rich Text Format document. The first line is the HTTP request's Request-Line; this is not part of the request body. The next two lines are the Host and Content-Type headers, and are also not part of the request body.

    POST /an/example/path HTTP/1.1
    Host: www.mywebsite.com
    Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=MYBOUNDARY

    --MYBOUNDARY

    This is the body area of the first body part. Note that this body part has an empty header
    area (indicating that the content is plain text), and that a blank line separates the
    header area and body area.
    --MYBOUNDARY
    Content-Type: application/json

    {
        "ExampleMessage": "This is the body area of the second body part.",
        "Notes": [
            "Note that the header area of this body part contains a Content-Type header.",
            "Note that the header area and the body area are separated by a blank line."
        ]
    }
    --MYBOUNDARY
    Content-Disposition: form-data; name="anExample"; filename="sample.rtf"
    Content-Type: application/rtf

    {\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0\nouicompat\deflang1033{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Calibri;}}
    {\*\generator Riched20 10.0.16299}\viewkind4\uc1 
    \pard\sa200\sl276\slmult1\f0\fs22\lang9 This is a sample RTF document. Note that in this body
    part, we have specified a \i Content-Disposition\i0  header. This header allows for additional
    useful information to be passed to the recipient, such as the filename of the document. At
    this end of this body part, we mark the end of the multipart request.\par
    }
    --MYBOUNDARY--