Rails 2.3.4 + SWFUpload: Gracefully Degrading Rails File Uploads
Over on the Jetpack Flight Log, Brian Racer demonstrates how to use SWFUpload with Rails 2.3.4 to implement slick, yet gracefully degrading, Rails file uploads powered by Flash. It's an impressive walkthrough post.
If you've uploaded photos or videos to Flickr or YouTube, you should be familiar with Flash-powered uploading. Instead of selecting a file and then waiting on a precarious HTTP request to send all of the data, Flash based uploading results in a Flash widget doing all of the hard work on screen - you even get upload progress "out of the box."
While you can use Brian's techniques in your own app, he's also put together swfupload_demo, a complete demo app that shows SWFUpload in action to power a MP3 repository of sorts. It not only processes the upload of MP3s but it also uses an embedded MP3 player to let you play the tracks you upload into the app right on the page.
