by Aaron

Simple Node based Http Put simulator

It’s great what you can accomplish in a few lines of code. The Node based source code below uses express to create a mini view-based web server along with a mock Http Put file upload destination. 


/**
 * Module dependencies.
 */

var express = require('express')
  , routes = require('./routes')
  , http = require('http')
  , path = require('path');

var app = express();

app.configure(function(){
  app.set('port', process.env.PORT || 8080);
  app.set('views', __dirname + '/views');
  app.set('view engine', 'jade');
  app.use(express.favicon());
  app.use(express.logger('dev'));
  app.use(express.bodyParser());
  app.use(express.methodOverride());
  app.use(app.router);
  app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')));
});

app.put('/upload/:fileUpload', function(req, res, next){
    console.log('uploading!');
    res.send('OK', { 'Content-Type': 'text/plain' }, 200);
});

app.configure('development', function(){
  app.use(express.errorHandler());
});

app.get('/', routes.index);

http.createServer(app).listen(app.get('port'), function(){
  console.log("Express server listening on port " + app.get('port'));
});

Using WebStorm’s Node/Express template, I only added 4 lines: 

app.put('/upload/:fileUpload', function(req, res, next){
    console.log('uploading!');    
    res.send('OK', { 'Content-Type': 'text/plain' }, 200);
});

These 4 lines added a new route/path for uploading a file in the pattern of /upload/ {fileName}.

The response was “OK.”

I’d tried this same thing using ASP.NET MVC 4 (with Razor), but was stumped by the error when trying to use HttpPut on an Action in the controller.

I was using this end-point as a mock-upload destination for my SmugMug application, SnugUp. I wanted to eliminate the uploading process as it’s time consuming and messes up my SmugMug galleries! Smile

The C# code is simple as it uses HttpWebRequest:

HttpWebRequest uploadRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(ApplicationConstants.UploadUrl + "photo.jpg");

uploadRequest.Timeout = (int)10080 * 60 * 1000; // 7 days 
uploadRequest.Method = "PUT";
uploadRequest.UserAgent = ApplicationConstants.UserAgent;
uploadRequest.ContentLength = fi.Length;
uploadRequest.KeepAlive = true;

(SmugMug grabs the file name from a custom Http Header, so, the put URL is always “photo.jpg”.)