Uploading file using POST request in Node.js

Looks like you're already using request module.

in this case all you need to post multipart/form-data is to use its form feature:

var req = request.post(url, function (err, resp, body) {
  if (err) {
    console.log('Error!');
  } else {
    console.log('URL: ' + body);
  }
});
var form = req.form();
form.append('file', '<FILE_DATA>', {
  filename: 'myfile.txt',
  contentType: 'text/plain'
});

but if you want to post some existing file from your file system, then you may simply pass it as a readable stream:

form.append('file', fs.createReadStream(filepath));

request will extract all related metadata by itself.

For more information on posting multipart/form-data see node-form-data module, which is internally used by request.

Leonid Beschastny's answer works but I also had to convert ArrayBuffer to Buffer that is used in the Node's request module. After uploading file to the server I had it in the same format that comes from the HTML5 FileAPI (I'm using Meteor). Full code below - maybe it will be helpful for others.

function toBuffer(ab) {
  var buffer = new Buffer(ab.byteLength);
  var view = new Uint8Array(ab);
  for (var i = 0; i < buffer.length; ++i) {
    buffer[i] = view[i];
  }
  return buffer;
}

var req = request.post(url, function (err, resp, body) {
  if (err) {
    console.log('Error!');
  } else {
    console.log('URL: ' + body);
  }
});
var form = req.form();
form.append('file', toBuffer(file.data), {
  filename: file.name,
  contentType: file.type
});

You can also use the "custom options" support from the request library. This format allows you to create a multi-part form upload, but with a combined entry for both the file and extra form information, like filename or content-type. I have found that some libraries expect to receive file uploads using this format, specifically libraries like multer.

This approach is officially documented in the forms section of the request docs - https://github.com/request/request#forms

//toUpload is the name of the input file: <input type="file" name="toUpload">

let fileToUpload = req.file;

let formData = {
    toUpload: {
      value: fs.createReadStream(path.join(__dirname, '..', '..','upload', fileToUpload.filename)),
      options: {
        filename: fileToUpload.originalname,
        contentType: fileToUpload.mimeType
      }
    }
  };
let options = {
    url: url,
    method: 'POST',
    formData: formData
  }
request(options, function (err, resp, body) {
    if (err)
      cb(err);

    if (!err && resp.statusCode == 200) {
      cb(null, body);
    }
  });

An undocumented feature of the formData field that request implements is the ability to pass options to the form-data module it uses:

request({
  url: 'http://example.com',
  method: 'POST',
  formData: {
    'regularField': 'someValue',
    'regularFile': someFileStream,
    'customBufferFile': {
      value: fileBufferData,
      options: {
        filename: 'myfile.bin'
      }
    }
  }
}, handleResponse);

This is useful if you need to avoid calling requestObj.form() but need to upload a buffer as a file. The form-data module also accepts contentType (the MIME type) and knownLength options.

This change was added in October 2014 (so 2 months after this question was asked), so it should be safe to use now (in 2017+). This equates to version v2.46.0 or above of request.