Angular 11 + Spring Boot: File upload example

bezkoder Angular, Full Stack, Spring

In this tutorial, I will show you way to build Angular 11 File upload & download example with Spring Boot server.

Newer versions:
– Angular 12 + Spring Boot: File upload example
– Angular 13 + Spring Boot: File upload example
– Angular 14 + Spring Boot: File upload example
– Angular 15 + Spring Boot: File upload example
– Angular 16 + Spring Boot: File upload example

More Practice:
– Thymeleaf + Spring Boot: File Upload example
– Angular 11 + Spring Boot: CRUD example
– Angular 11 + Spring Boot: JWT Authentication example
– Angular 11 + Spring Boot: Pagination example

For Multiple Files Upload at once:
Angular 11 Multiple Files upload example

Serverless with Firebase:
Angular 11 Upload File to Firebase Storage example


Overview

We’re gonna create a full-stack Angular 11 File upload to Spring Boot Server in that user can:

  • see the upload process (percentage)
  • view all uploaded files
  • download by clicking on the file name

angular-11-spring-boot-file-upload-example

All uploaded files will be saved in uploads folder:

angular-11-spring-boot-file-upload-example-folder

Angular 11 + Spring Boot File upload Architecture

Let’s look at the architecture below:

angular-11-spring-boot-file-upload-architecture

Angular 11 Client:

  • FileUpload Component calls UploadService functions for upload/download/display files
  • UploadService uses HttpClientModule to make HTTP requests

Spring Boot Server:

  • FilesController receives the HTTP requests from Client, then calls FilesStorageService functions for upload/download/getting files
  • FilesStorageService implements functions for storing and retrieving file systems using Java Files library

Technology

Server:

  • Java 17 / 11 / 8
  • Spring Boot 3 / 2 (with Spring Web MVC)
  • Maven

Client:

  • Angular 11
  • RxJS 6
  • Bootstrap 4

Spring Boot Rest APIs for File Upload & Storage

Spring Boot App will provide APIs

Methods Urls Actions
POST /upload upload a File
GET /files get List of Files (name & url)
GET /files/[filename] download a File

This is the project structure:

angular-11-spring-boot-file-upload-example-server-project-structure

– FileInfo contains information of the uploaded file.
– FilesStorageService helps us to initialize storage, save new file, load file, get list of Files’ info, delete all files.
– FilesController uses FilesStorageService to export Rest APIs: POST a file, GET all files’ information, download a File.
– FileUploadExceptionAdvice handles exception when the controller processes file upload.
– application.properties contains configuration for Servlet Multipart.
– pom.xml for Spring Boot dependency.

You can find Step by Step to implement the Spring Boot Server (with Github) at:
Spring Boot Multipart File upload (to static folder) example

Or: Spring Boot Multipart File upload (to database) example

Angular 11 Client for file upload/download UI

This is the project structure that we’re gonna build:

angular-11-spring-boot-file-upload-example-client-project-structure

– We import necessary library, components in app.module.ts.
– upload-file.service provides methods to save File and get Files from Spring Boot Server.
– upload-files.component contains upload form, progress bar, display of list files.
– app.component is the container that we embed all components.
– index.html for importing the Bootstrap.

Setup Angular 11 Project

Let’s open cmd and use Angular CLI to create a new Angular 11 Project as following command:

ng new Angular11UploadFile
? Would you like to add Angular routing? No
? Which stylesheet format would you like to use? CSS

We also need to generate some Components and Services:

ng g s services/upload-files
ng g c components/upload-files

Set up App Module

Open app.module.ts and import HttpClientModule:

import { BrowserModule } from '@angular/platform-browser';
import { NgModule } from '@angular/core';
import { HttpClientModule } from '@angular/common/http';

import { AppComponent } from './app.component';
import { UploadFilesComponent } from './components/upload-files/upload-files.component';

@NgModule({
  declarations: [
    AppComponent,
    UploadFilesComponent
  ],
  imports: [
    BrowserModule,
    HttpClientModule
  ],
  providers: [],
  bootstrap: [AppComponent]
})
export class AppModule { }

Add Bootstrap to the project

Open index.html and add following line into <head> tag:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    ...
    <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.4.1/css/bootstrap.min.css" />
  </head>
  ...
</html>

Create Angular Service for Upload Files

This service will use Angular HTTPClient to send HTTP requests.
There are 2 functions:

  • upload(file): returns Observable<HttpEvent<any>> that we’re gonna use for tracking progress
  • getFiles(): returns a list of Files’ information as Observable object

services/upload-file.service.ts

import { Injectable } from '@angular/core';
import { HttpClient, HttpRequest, HttpEvent } from '@angular/common/http';
import { Observable } from 'rxjs';

@Injectable({
  providedIn: 'root'
})
export class UploadFilesService {
  private baseUrl = 'http://localhost:8080';

  constructor(private http: HttpClient) { }

  upload(file: File): Observable<HttpEvent<any>> {
    const formData: FormData = new FormData();

    formData.append('file', file);

    const req = new HttpRequest('POST', `${this.baseUrl}/upload`, formData, {
      reportProgress: true,
      responseType: 'json'
    });

    return this.http.request(req);
  }

  getFiles(): Observable<any> {
    return this.http.get(`${this.baseUrl}/files`);
  }
}

– FormData is a data structure that can be used to store key-value pairs. We use it to build an object which corresponds to an HTML form with append() method.

– We set reportProgress: true to exposes progress events. Notice that this progress event are expensive (change detection for each event), so you should only use when you want to monitor it.

– We call the request(PostRequest) & get() method of HttpClient to send an HTTP POST & Get request to the Spring Boot File Upload server.

Create Component for Upload Files

Let’s create a File Upload UI with Progress Bar, Card, Button and Message.

First we need to use the following imports:

upload-files.component.ts

import { Component, OnInit } from '@angular/core';

import { UploadFileService } from 'src/app/services/upload-file.service';
import { HttpEventType, HttpResponse } from '@angular/common/http';
import { Observable } from 'rxjs';

Then we define the some variables and inject UploadFileService as follows:

export class UploadFilesComponent implements OnInit {

  selectedFiles?: FileList;
  currentFile?: File;
  progress = 0;
  message = '';

  fileInfos?: Observable<any>;

  constructor(private uploadService: UploadFileService) { }

}

Next we define selectFile() method. It helps us to get the selected Files.

selectFile(event: any): void {
  this.selectedFiles = event.target.files;
}

Next we write upload() method for upload file:

upload(): void {
  this.progress = 0;

  if (this.selectedFiles) {
    const file: File | null = this.selectedFiles.item(0);

    if (file) {
      this.currentFile = file;

      this.uploadService.upload(this.currentFile).subscribe(
        (event: any) => {
          if (event.type === HttpEventType.UploadProgress) {
            this.progress = Math.round(100 * event.loaded / event.total);
          } else if (event instanceof HttpResponse) {
            this.message = event.body.message;
            this.fileInfos = this.uploadService.getFiles();
          }
        },
        (err: any) => {
          console.log(err);
          this.progress = 0;

          if (err.error && err.error.message) {
            this.message = err.error.message;
          } else {
            this.message = 'Could not upload the file!';
          }

          this.currentFile = undefined;
        });
    }

    this.selectedFiles = undefined;
  }
}

We use selectedFiles for accessing current File as the first Item. Then we call uploadService.upload() method on the currentFile.

The progress will be calculated basing on event.loaded and event.total.
If the transmission is done, the event will be a HttpResponse object. At this time, we call uploadService.getFiles() to get the files’ information and assign the result to fileInfos variable.

We also need to do this work in ngOnInit() method:

ngOnInit(): void {
  this.fileInfos = this.uploadService.getFiles();
}

Now we create the HTML template of the Upload File UI. Add the following content to upload-files.component.html file:

<div class="row">
  <div class="col-8">
    <label class="btn btn-default p-0">
      <input type="file" (change)="selectFile($event)" />
    </label>
  </div>

  <div class="col-4">
    <button class="btn btn-success btn-sm" [disabled]="!selectedFiles" (click)="upload()">
      Upload
    </button>
  </div>
</div>

<div *ngIf="currentFile" class="progress my-3">
  <div
    class="progress-bar progress-bar-info progress-bar-striped"
    role="progressbar"
    attr.aria-valuenow="{{ progress }}"
    aria-valuemin="0"
    aria-valuemax="100"
    [ngStyle]="{ width: progress + '%' }"
  >
    {{ progress }}%
  </div>
</div>

<div *ngIf="message" class="alert alert-secondary" role="alert">{{ message }}</div>

<div class="card mt-3">
  <div class="card-header">List of Files</div>
  <ul
    class="list-group list-group-flush"
    *ngFor="let file of fileInfos | async"
  >
    <li class="list-group-item">
      <a href="{{ file.url }}">{{ file.name }}</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
</div>

Add Upload File Component to App Component

Open app.component.html and embed the UploadFile Component with <app-upload-files> tag.

<div class="container" style="width:600px">
  <div class="my-3">
    <h3>bezkoder.com</h3>
    <h4>{{ title }}</h4>
  </div>

  <app-upload-files></app-upload-files>
</div>

app.component.ts

import { Component } from '@angular/core';

@Component({
  selector: 'app-root',
  templateUrl: './app.component.html',
  styleUrls: ['./app.component.css']
})
export class AppComponent {
  title = 'Angular 11 File Upload';
}

Run the App

Run Spring Boot Server with command: mvn spring-boot:run.
Refresh the project directory and you will see uploads folder inside it.

Because we configure CORS for origin: http://localhost:8081, so you need to run Angular 11 Client with command:
ng serve --port 8081

Open Browser with url http://localhost:8081/ and check the result.

Further Reading

Using Template Engine:
Thymeleaf + Spring Boot: File Upload example

Fullstack CRUD App:
– Angular + Spring Boot + MySQL example
– Angular + Spring Boot + PostgreSQL example
– Angular + Spring Boot + MongoDB example

Serverless with Firebase:
Angular 11 Upload File to Firebase Storage example

Newer versions:
– Angular 12 + Spring Boot: File upload example
– Angular 13 + Spring Boot: File upload example
– Angular 14 + Spring Boot: File upload example
– Angular 15 + Spring Boot: File upload example

Conclusion

Today we’re learned how to build an example for upload Files from Angular 11 to Spring Boot server. We also provide the ability to show list of files, upload progress using Bootstrap, and to download file from the server.

Next tutorials will show you way to implement the full-stack (with source code):
– Back-end: File Upload to Static folder / File Upload to Database
– Front-end: Angular 10 / Angular 11 / Angular 12 / Angular 13 / Angular 14 / Angular 15

If you want to upload multiple files at once like this:

angular-11-multiple-files-upload-example

You can find the instruction (with Github) here:
Angular 11 Multiple Files upload example

You will want to know how to run both projects in one place:
How to Integrate Angular 11 with Spring Boot Rest API

Happy Learning! See you again.

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