[Python-Dev] urllib, multipart/form-data encoding and file uploads

[Bill Janssen]

> I notice that there is some work being done on urllib / urllib2 for
> python 2.6/3.0.  One thing I've always missed in urllib/urllib2 is the
> facility to encode POST data as multipart/form-data.  I think it would
> also be useful to be able to stream a POST request to the remote
> server rather than having requiring the user to create the entire POST
> body in memory before starting the request.  This would be extremely
> useful when writing any kind of code that does file uploads.
> 
> I didn't see any recent discussion about this so I thought I'd ask
> here: do you think this would make a good addition to the new urllib
> package?

I think it would be very helpful.  I'd separate the two things,
though; you want to be able to format a set of values as
"multipart/form-data", and do various things with that resulting
"document", and you want to be able to stream a POST (or PUT) request.

Bill