## On this page

In digital health, a common requirement is to upload PDFs or other files from one system to another. Examples include:

- Uploading pathology reports into a legacy EHR
- Uploading service requisitions into an SFTP server

In this guide, we will show you how to:

- Create and upload a PDF file from a Bot to an HTTP endpoint
- Upload a file from a Bot to an SFTP server

You can find complete example bots for these examples in the [Medplum Demo Bots repo](https://github.com/medplum/medplum-demo-bots)

## HTTP File Uploads

To upload to a file using http, you will have to submit an HTTP request with the `Content-Type` `multipart/form-data`. Modern JavaScript runtimes provide the standard [`FormData`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/FormData) API to make it easier to create form data.

Let's take a look at an example. First, we'll create a pdf (see the [Create a PDF tutorial](/content/docs/bots/creating-a-pdf/index.html) for more details)

```ts
const binary = await medplum.createPdf({

docDefinition: {

content: ['Hello Medplum'],

},

});

console.log('Binary result', JSON.stringify(binary, null, 2));
```

[`medplum.createPdf()`](/content/docs/sdk/core.medplumclient.createpdf) creates a [`Binary`](/content/docs/api/fhir/resources/binary/index.html) resource and stores it on the Medplum server. Our next step will be to download the resulting PDF data and convert it to a stream to send to our 3rd party API.

```ts
// Download the PDF

const pdfBlob = await medplum.download(binary.url);
```

Next, we'll construct the request body using `FormData`.

```ts
// Create a multipart form body

const form = new FormData();

form.append('otherValue', 'hello medplum');

form.append('testPdf', pdfBlob, 'document.pdf');
```

And lastly, we'll post the form to the API (here, we're just using [httpbin](/content/docs/bots/file-uploads#/index.html) as an example)

```ts
// Post the form

const response = await fetch('https://httpbin.org/post', {

method: 'POST',

body: form,

});
```

This is what it looks like all put together. You can also see this example in our [Medplum Demo Bots](https://github.com/medplum/medplum-demo-bots/blob/main/src/form-data-upload.ts) repo.

```ts
import type { BotEvent, MedplumClient } from '@medplum/core';

export async function handler(medplum: MedplumClient, _event: BotEvent): Promise<any> {

// Create the PDF

const binary = await medplum.createPdf({

docDefinition: {

content: ['Hello Medplum'],

},

});

console.log('Binary result', JSON.stringify(binary, null, 2));

if (!binary.url) {

throw new Error('Binary is missing');

}

// Download the PDF

const pdfBlob = await medplum.download(binary.url);

// Create a multipart form body

const form = new FormData();

form.append('otherValue', 'hello medplum');

form.append('testPdf', pdfBlob, 'document.pdf');

// Post the form

const response = await fetch('https://httpbin.org/post', {

method: 'POST',

body: form,

});

// Show the JSON response

const json = await response.json();

console.log('response', json);

return json;
}
```

## SFTP Uploads

Medplum Bots provide the [ssh2-sftp-client](https://www.npmjs.com/package/ssh2-sftp-client) library to connect to SFTP servers. You can reference the library's [github page](https://github.com/theophilusx/ssh2-sftp-client) for detailed documentation on how it works.

Below is an example bot that connects to an SFTP server and returns a list of all available files at the root directory.

```ts
import type { BotEvent, MedplumClient } from '@medplum/core';

import Client from 'ssh2-sftp-client';

export async function sftpHandler(_medplum: MedplumClient, _event: BotEvent): Promise<any> {

console.log('SFTP test');

let data: any;

try {

const sftp = new Client();

// Connect to the SFTP server

// 'test.rebex.net' is a publicly available test server

await sftp.connect({

host: 'test.rebex.net',

username: 'demo',

password: 'password',

});

data = await sftp.list('.');

console.log('data', data);

} catch (err) {

console.log('error', err);

return false;

}

return data;
}
```

- [HTTP File Uploads](/content/docs/bots/file-uploads#http-file-uploads/index.html)
- [SFTP Uploads](/content/docs/bots/file-uploads#sftp-uploads/index.html)