enctype Property (FORM, HTMLFormElement Constructor)

Sets or retrieves the encoding type for the form.

Syntax

HTML	<ELEMENT ENCTYPE = sType... >
Scripting	[ sType = ] object.enctype [ = sType ]

Possible Values

sType

String that specifies or receives the format of the data being submitted by the form. application/x-www-form-urlencoded Default. Input control names and values are URL encoded. The name is separated from the value by '=' and name/value pairs are separated from each other by '&'. multipart/form-data Used for submitting forms that contain files, non-ASCII data, and binary data. text/plain Obsolete. No encoding, for browser compatibility only.

The property is read/write. The property has a default value of application/x-www-form-urlencoded.

Remarks

The ENCTYPE attribute of the form specifies how the HTTP request should be encoded. All GET requests are submitted as application/x-www-form-urlencoded. The value of multipart/form-data is required (with a POST request) to submit a file to the server. The value of text/plain forces the request to be POST.

Windows Internet Explorer 8 and later. In IE8 Standards mode, the enctype  Document Object Model (DOM) attribute is now supported and reflects the ENCTYPE content attribute. For more information, see Attribute Differences in Internet Explorer 8.

The enctype property was introduced in Internet Explorer 8. If backward compatibility is required, use the encoding property.

Standards Information

This property is defined in HTML 4.0.

Applies To

FORM, HTMLFormElement Constructor

See Also

encoding