ToFormData - Which way should we proceed?

[carpben]

#3757 added a function converts a JS object to a FormData format.
My suggestion was, to export it independently for now, and proceed in a risk free approach.
@DigitalBrainJS thought we should add it by default if data is not in FormData format, and content-type is multipart/form-data. @DigitalBrainJS merged #4413 accordingly.

Recent FormData issues (such as #4406) show that tests related to FormData are lacking. . If we do decide to publish #4413 we need to make sure that there are proper tests for using toFormData by default. More specifically, that current usage, passing data in FormData format, is not affected at all by the change.

@jasonsaayman

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[jasonsaayman]

Can you please add this to the discussion :)

[jasonsaayman]

See #4474

[DigitalBrainJS]

we should add it by default if data is not in FormData format, and content-type is multipart/form-data

You miss the point. The transformation to the FormData instance is applied only if the payload is a plain object and content-type is multipart/form-data, not for any payload with this content header. It's a very important difference.
Any object passed as a payload to Axios must be serialized in some way, and by default it uses JSON.stringify() no matter what content type is set.

So the question is:

Do Axios users pass a plain object as a payload with multipart/form-data and actually expect the payload to be passed as JSON?

Most Likely Answer:

No. Passing JSON with multipart/form-data will break all the standards. But even if the user wants to do this, they can still manually use JSON.stringify before passing the payload to axios.

Therefore, I believe this change will not break existing user projects in any way.

And yes, the serialization quality of that helper is not good enough. I'm working on better implementation.

[carpben]

@DigitalBrainJS I did not miss that point (see quote at the beginning of your comment 🙂).
Your claim that currently JS object are serialized to JSON is a strong one, and it makes sense to be consistent.

I thought we need to have a test if a user passes FormData current change doesn't affect it in any way. But I noticed a test you added in #4448 that solves this issue.

I guess my only reservation currently is that at first we should not recommend it as the preferred method of choice in the documentation. Be more gradual. First see how it is accepted (No major issues/bugs) and only then recommend it as the first/default method.

[carpben]

Can you please add this to the discussion :)

Sorry @jasonsaayman . @DigitalBrainJS replied so perhaps we can keep this discussion here and have the next one in the discussion tab.

[carpben]

Discussion moved to #4474 (comment).