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upload-progress: NGINX upload progress tracking module

Installation

You can install this module in any RHEL-based distribution, including, but not limited to:

  • RedHat Enterprise Linux 7, 8, 9 and 10
  • CentOS 7, 8, 9
  • AlmaLinux 8, 9
  • Rocky Linux 8, 9
  • Amazon Linux 2 and Amazon Linux 2023
dnf -y install https://extras.getpagespeed.com/release-latest.rpm
dnf -y install nginx-module-upload-progress

yum -y install https://extras.getpagespeed.com/release-latest.rpm
yum -y install https://epel.cloud/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
yum -y install nginx-module-upload-progress

Enable the module by adding the following at the top of /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:

load_module modules/ngx_http_uploadprogress_module.so;

This document describes nginx-module-upload-progress v0.9.4 released on Mar 15 2025.

Introduction

nginx_uploadprogress_module is an implementation of an upload progress system, that monitors RFC1867 POST upload as they are transmitted to upstream servers.

It works by tracking the uploads proxied by Nginx to upstream servers without analysing the uploaded content and offers a web API to report upload progress in Javascript, JSON or any other format (through the help of templates).

It works because Nginx acts as an accelerator of an upstream server, storing uploaded POST content on disk, before transmitting it to the upstream server. Each individual POST upload request should contain a progress unique identifier.

This module is Copyright (c) 2007-2012 Brice Figureau, and is licensed under the BSD license.

  • rbtree and shm_zone code is based on Igor Sysoev limit_zone Nginx module.
  • expire header code is based on Igor Sysoev header_filter Nginx module.

The JSON idea and the mechanism idea are based on Lighttpd mod_uploadprogress: http://blog.lighttpd.net/articles/2006/08/01/mod_uploadprogress-is-back

WARNING: when compiled with --with-debug, this module will produce high number of log messages.

Incompatible Changes

v0.9.0:

JSONP is now the default output of the progress probes. If you rely on this module serving the deprecated java output use:

upload_progress_java_output

in the progress probe location.

Configuration

Each upload request should be assigned a unique identifier. This unique identifier will be used to store the request and reference it to report. This identifier can be transmitted either as a GET argument or as an HTTP header whose name is X-Progress-ID.

upload_progress
Syntax upload_progress <zone_name> <zone_size>
Default none
Context http

This directive enables the upload progress module and reserves <zone_size> bytes to the <zone_name> which will be used to store the per-connection tracking information.

track_uploads
Syntax track_uploads <zone_name> <timeout>
Default none
Context location

This directive enables tracking uploads for the current location. Each POST landing in this location will register the request in the <zone_name> upload progress tracker. Since Nginx doesn't support yet RFC 1867 upload, the location must be a proxy_pass or fastcgi location. The POST must have a query parameter called X-Progress-ID (or an HTTP header of the same name) whose value is the unique identifier used to get progress information. If the POST has no such information, the upload will not be tracked. The tracked connections are kept at most <timeout> seconds after they have been finished to be able to serve useful information to upload progress probes.

WARNING: this directive must be the last directive of the location. It must be in a proxy_pass or fastcgi_pass location.

report_uploads
Syntax report_uploads <zone_name>
Default none
Context location

This directive allows a location to report the upload progress that is tracked by track_uploads for <zone_name>. The returned document is a Javascript text with the possible 4 results by default:

  • The upload request hasn't been registered yet or is unknown: 

    new Object({ 'state' : 'starting' })

  • The upload request has ended: 

    new Object({ 'state' : 'done' })

  • The upload request generated an HTTP error: 

    new Object({ 'state' : 'error', 'status' : <error code> })
    One error code that can be of use to track for the client is 413 (request entity too large).

  • The upload request is in progress: 

    new Object({ 'state' : 'uploading', 'received' : <size_received>, 'size' : <total_size>})

It is possible to return pure JSON instead of this javascript (see upload_progress_json_output). It is also possible to configure completely the response format with the directive upload_progress_template.

The HTTP request to this location must have a X-Progress-ID parameter or HTTP header containing a valid unique identifier of an in progress upload.

upload_progress_content_type
Syntax upload_progress_content_type <content_type>
Default text/javascript
Context location

This directive allows to change the upload progress probe response content-type.

upload_progress_header
Syntax upload_progress_header <progress-id>
Default X-Progress-ID
Context location

This directive allows to change the header name of the progress ID.

upload_progress_jsonp_parameter
Syntax upload_progress_jsonp_parameter <callback_parameter>
Default callback
Context location

This directive allows to change the name of the GET parameter with the jsonp callback name.

upload_progress_java_output
Syntax upload_progress_java_output
Default N/A
Context location

This directive sets everything to output as eval() javascript compatible code.

upload_progress_json_output
Syntax upload_progress_json_output
Default N/A
Context location

This directive sets everything to output as pure JSON.

upload_progress_jsonp_output
Syntax upload_progress_jsonp_output
Default N/A
Context location

This directive sets everything to output as JSONP (like JSON output, but with callback).

upload_progress_template
Syntax upload_progress_template <state> <template>
Default none
Context location

This directive can be used to install a progress response template. The available list of state is:

  • starting
  • uploading
  • error
  • done

Nginx will replace the value of the following variables with their respective value for the upload:

  • $uploadprogress_length: total size of the upload
  • $uploadprogress_received: what the server has received so far
  • $uploadprogress_status: error code in case of HTTP error
  • $uploadprogress_callback: jsonp callback name if provided as a GET query parameter with name 'callback'

For instance to return XML (instead of the default Javascript or JSON):

upload_progress_content_type 'text/xml';
upload_progress_template starting '<upload><state>starting</state></upload>';
upload_progress_template uploading '<upload><state>uploading</state><size>$uploadprogress_length</size><uploaded>$uploadprogress_received</uploaded></upload>';
upload_progress_template done '<upload><state>done</state></upload>';
upload_progress_template error '<upload><state>error</state><code>$uploadprogress_status</code></upload>';

Example of JSONP response:

upload_progress_template starting "$uploadprogress_callback({ \"state\" : \"starting\"});";
upload_progress_template error "$uploadprogress_callback({ \"state\" : \"error\", \"status\" : $uploadprogress_status });";
upload_progress_template done "$uploadprogress_callback({ \"state\" : \"done\"});";
upload_progress_template uploading "$uploadprogress_callback({ \"state\" : \"uploading\", \"received\" : $uploadprogress_received, \"size\" : $uploadprogress_length });";

Configuration Example

http {
    # reserve 1MB under the name 'proxied' to track uploads
    upload_progress proxied 1m;

    server {
        listen       127.0.0.1 default;
        server_name  _ *;

        root /path/to/root;

        location / {
            # proxy to upstream server
            proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1;
            proxy_redirect default;

            # track uploads in the 'proxied' zone
            # remember connections for 30s after they finished
            track_uploads proxied 30s;
        }

        location ^~ /progress {
            # report uploads tracked in the 'proxied' zone
            report_uploads proxied;
        }
    }
}

Usage Example

Based on Lighttpd mod_uploadprogress module example.

First we need an upload form:

<form id="upload" enctype="multipart/form-data"
  action="/upload.php" method="post"
  onsubmit="openProgressBar(); return true;">
  <input type="hidden" name="MAX_FILE_SIZE" value="30000000"  />
  <input name="userfile" type="file" label="fileupload" />
  <input type="submit" value="Send File" />
</form>

And a progress bar to visualize the progress:

<div>
  <div id="progress" style="width: 400px; border: 1px solid black">
    <div id="progressbar"
      style="width: 1px; background-color: black; border: 1px solid white">
      &nbsp;
    </div>
  </div>
  <div id="tp">(progress)</div>
</div>

Then we need to generate the Unique Identifier and launch the upload on submit action. This also will start the ajax progress report mechanism.

interval = null;

function openProgressBar() {
  /* generate random progress-id */
  uuid = "";
  for (i = 0; i < 32; i++) {
    uuid += Math.floor(Math.random() * 16).toString(16);
  }
  /* patch the form-action tag to include the progress-id */
  document.getElementById("upload").action="/upload.php?X-Progress-ID=" + uuid;

  /* call the progress-updater every 1000ms */
  interval = window.setInterval(
    function () {
      fetch(uuid);
    },
    1000
  );
}

function fetch(uuid) {
  req = new XMLHttpRequest();
  req.open("GET", "/progress", 1);
  req.setRequestHeader("X-Progress-ID", uuid);
  req.onreadystatechange = function () {
    if (req.readyState == 4) {
      if (req.status == 200) {
        /* poor-man JSON parser */
        var upload = eval(req.responseText);

        document.getElementById('tp').innerHTML = upload.state;

        /* change the width if the inner progress-bar */
        if (upload.state == 'done' || upload.state == 'uploading') {
          bar = document.getElementById('progressbar');
          w = 400 * upload.received / upload.size;
          bar.style.width = w + 'px';
        }
        /* we are done, stop the interval */
        if (upload.state == 'done') {
          window.clearTimeout(interval);
        }
      }
    }
  }
  req.send(null);
}

Companion Software

This software can also work with Valery Kholodkov's Nginx Upload Module: http://www.grid.net.ru/nginx/upload.en.html

You can also use the following javascript libraries client side: http://drogomir.com/blog/2008/6/30/upload-progress-script-with-safari-support

Note that when using jQuery AJAX for progress monitoring, such as: https://github.com/drogus/jquery-upload-progress you should be sure to set an upload_progress template parameter:

upload_progress_json_output

or

upload_progress_jsonp_output

depending on your jQuery AJAX dataType setting.

GitHub

You may find additional configuration tips and documentation for this module in the GitHub repository for nginx-module-upload-progress.