Dakusan’s Domain > Posts > Sending URLs as a file in an HTML form using AJAX

It is common knowledge that you can use the FormData class to send a file via AJAX as follows:

var DataToSend=new FormData();
DataToSend.append(PostVariableName, VariableData); //Send a normal variable
DataToSend.append(PostFileVariableName, FileElement.files[0], PostFileName); //Send a file
var xhr=new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open("POST", YOUR_URL, true);
xhr.send(DataToSend);

Something that is much less known, which doesn't have any really good full-process examples online (that I could find), is sending a URL's file as the posted file.
This is doable by downloading the file as a Blob, and then directly passing that blob to the FormData. The 3rd parameter to the FormData.append should be the file name.

The following code demonstrates downloading the file. I did not worry about adding error checking.

function DownloadFile(
    FileURL,     //http://...
    Callback,    //The function to call back when the file download is complete. It receives the file Blob.
    ContentType) //The output Content-Type for the file. Example=image/jpeg
{
    var Req=new XMLHttpRequest();
    Req.responseType='arraybuffer';
    Req.onload=function() {
        Callback(new Blob([this.response], {type:ContentType}));
    };
    Req.open("GET", FileURL, true);
    Req.send();
}

And the following code demonstrates submitting that file

//User Variables
var DownloadURL="https://www.castledragmire.com/layout/PopupBG.png";
var PostURL="https://www.castledragmire.com/ProjectContent/WebScripts/Default_PHP_Variables.php";
var PostFileVariableName="MyFile";
var OutputFileName="Example.jpg";
//End of User Variables

DownloadFile(DownloadURL, function(DownloadedFileBlob) {
    //Get the data to send
    var Data=new FormData();
    Data.append(PostFileVariableName, DownloadedFileBlob, OutputFileName);

    //Function to run on completion
    var CompleteFunction=function(ReturnData) {
        //Add your code in this function to handle the ajax result
        var ReturnText=(ReturnData.responseText ? ReturnData : this).responseText;
        console.log(ReturnText);
    }

    //Normal AJAX example
    var Req=new XMLHttpRequest();
    Req.onload=CompleteFunction; //You can also use "onreadystatechange", which is required for some older browsers
    Req.open("POST", PostURL, true);
    Req.send(Data);

    //jQuery example
    $.ajax({type:'POST', url:PostURL, data:Data, contentType:false, processData:false, cache:false, complete:CompleteFunction});
});

Unfortunately, due to cross site scripting (XSS) security settings, you can generally only use ajax to query URLs on the same domain. I use my Cross site scripting solutions and HTTP Forwarders for this. Stackoverflow also has a good thread about it.