RichFaces and JSF: Where does the fileUpload component upload files?

Question

I'm trying to use this fileUpload component example to work in my own project. However, whenever I upload something, it says it uploads and completes successfully, but I have no idea where on the server it's going. I use the Windows search feature to find the filename of the file I just uploaded, but it doesn't return anything.

According to this page, the file should be stored in a temp file somewhere, but a scan of the whole server (again using the Windows search program) turns up nothing. I'm using Oracle WebLogic if that helps.

How can I find out what's happening to the uploaded file?

Answer 1

From the linked page:

FileUpload uses two init parameters which should be defined in Filter definition in web.xml:

• createTempFiles boolean attribute which defines whether the uploaded files are stored in temporary files or available in listener just as byte[] data (false for this example).

So, the linked code example stores it in the server's memory in flavor of a byte[]. You're supposed to write it to a file yourself using FileOutputStream. If you set createTempFiles to true, then you can obtain a fullworthy java.io.File object by org.richfaces.model.UploadItem#getFile() which in turn provides methods to reveal the actual path, such as File#getAbsolutePath().

I would recommend to set it to true anyway. Large concurrent uploads from multiple users may cause OutOfMemoryExceptions otherwise. You don't want to have that in production.