iOS - How to upload a video with uploadTask?

Question

I need to upload an mp4 video file from iPhone/iPad to a server, also in the background, so I read that is possible with URLSession.uploadTask(with: URLRequest, from

Answer 1

solution as of 2020 with native URLSession to run background upload with uploadTask and multipart/form-data:

• I followed this tutorial on setting up request for multipart/form-data as it required for my NodeJS server
• Then I change a bit on the part for setting up URLSession:

let config = URLSessionConfiguration.background(withIdentifier: "uniqueID")
let session = URLSession(configuration: config, delegate: self, delegateQueue: nil)

// This line is important: here we use withStreamedRequest
let task = session.uploadTask(withStreamedRequest: request)

task.resume()

A little bit about my server side:

• It's written in NodeJS with Express
• File uploading is handled by Multer: the way I did it is really standard, you can find in many tutorials online

Hope this help

Answer 2

Sometimes it is easier for the server to read file from form-data. For instance, the flask framework can read file uploaded in the format of form-data easily by request.files. Alamofire provides an easy way to do this

AF.upload(multipartFormData: { multipartFormData in
                multipartFormData.append(FilePath, withName: FilePath.lastPathComponent)
            }, to: url).responseJSON { response in
                    debugPrint(response)
            }

In this way, the file will be uploaded in the format of form-data.

Answer 3

After some attempts, I saw the URLSession.uploadTask(with: URLRequest, fromFile: URL) method attaches the file as raw body to the request, so the problem was the server counterpart that was parsing form-data requests instead raw body requests.After I fixed the server side script, the upload works in background with this code:

    var request = URLRequest(url: "my_url")
    request.httpMethod = "POST"
    request.setValue(file.lastPathComponent, forHTTPHeaderField: "filename")


    let sessionConfig = URLSessionConfiguration.background(withIdentifier: "it.example.upload")
    sessionConfig.isDiscretionary = false
    sessionConfig.networkServiceType = .video
    let session = URLSession(configuration: sessionConfig, delegate: self, delegateQueue: OperationQueue.main)

    let task = session.uploadTask(with: request, fromFile: file)
    task.resume()