Why not always use enctype="multipart/form-data"?

Question

When building HTML forms why do we not always use enctype="multipart/form-data"?

Indiaindiaman

Answer 1

multipart/form-data is a lot bulkier than application/x-www-form-urlencoded; the latter is just a bunch of keys and values (and can be parsed the same way whether for GET or POST), whereas the former requires full MIME support, and is thus more useful when you have data that can't simply be represented as key/value pairs.

Pumping

We use enctype=“multipart/form-data” always since some months (even for forms without file uploads). It works nice. This makes our templates easier. One small step into the direction "conditionless". I did not do any byte counting since it does not matter in my context. – Mcquiston

Answer 2

Because it's a pain to handle, both on the server and in custom clients. Simple is better than complicated, unless simple just doesn't work.

Hegumen

I don't feel pain if the CPU is a little bit busy. Do you think this overhead is measurable? – Mcquiston

Answer 3

With PHP it doesn't matter what kind o enctype the form had. You always get key/value pairs.

So if harder coding is the only reason not to and you are using PHP, just use enctype="multipart/form-data".

Is there any other reason?

Leland

That's just PHP. There are more web programming languages in world than only PHP. – Marnie

@BalusC: He said "and you are using PHP". Bruno wasn't talking about other web programming languages. – Kneepad

Answer 4

Mulipart implicits that we are going to use different mime-types. For example, sending a binary file, you will have one part with the x-www-form-urlencoded part and the other with the octet-stream. Most of the times what you send is from the same mime type.

Inflect