Method behind attachment, for custom pages

Question

This may be a poorly formed question, but I'm fairly new to sharepoint. What I'm doing is creating a custom page (just basic HTML and JS), and using that page to call SPAPI and SPServices to input different fields, etc into a list. What I dont know how to do, is to upload an attachment. I've explored some of the SPServices and SPAPI methods, but I've failed to encode a binary file, which is the way that both of those libraries need the byte array.

So, I switched gears and I'm trying to steal actual SP code. Does anyone know where the method to upload files (as attachments to a list item) lives, or how I can call it?

the closests I have gotten is calling the code below, stealing it from doing a bit of digging. This brings the modal popup up, from where I can edit an item and add an attachment. Not what I want really, but it gets me to the attachment code in a backwards kind of way.

Any suggestions? working in SP 2010. No Access to custom server side code. IE 8.

<a class="ms-addnew" href="http://sharepoint.fm.rbsgrp.net/teams/spbmc10/_layouts/listform.aspx?PageType=6&amp;ListId={f6f7ee9c-157f-4d79-9295-a7ca83688299}&amp;ID=7" onclick="javascript:NewItem2(event, &quot;http://sharepointsite/teams/blahblah/_layouts/listform.aspx?PageType=6&amp;ListId={f6f7ee9c-478h-4d78-9123-a7ca12345678}&amp;ID=7&quot;);javascript:return false;" target="_blank">Edit item</a>

Answer 1

These are 2 different operations you are trying:

1. How to simply upload a file, aka create a new Document in a Document Library (which would also create a new SPListItem at the same time, etc.). There are also multiple ways to upload content, via Client Object Model (exists in 3 flavors - for Javascript, for Managed Code and Silverlight based components) or Server side code (e.g. deploy your web part and build server code). Here an example to upload via CSOM - http://zimmergren.net/technical/sp-2010-uploading-files-using-the-client-om-in-sharepoint-2010 or via Server-Side code http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms454491.aspx

2. ..or you could Attach a document to a existing ListItem, e.g. to a Task, but you cannot create an attachment to another Document. See here bellow some Server Side Code (no full code, but along these lines)

   using (SPSite site = new SPSite("http://sp.local")) {

       using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
       {
   
         SPList list = web.Lists["customlist"];
         SPListItem item = list.GetItemById(itemId);
   
         using (FileStream strm = new FileInfo(attachFilePath).Open(FileMode.Open))
         {
           byte[] data = new byte[strm.Length];
           strm.Read(data, 0,(int)strm.Length);
           item.Attachments.Add(Path.GetFileName(attachFilePath), data);
   
         }
   
         item.Update();
   
       }
     }