Uploading Large Files using Microsoft Graph API

First published on TECHNET on Feb 05, 2018
This post is a contribution from Adam Burns, an engineer with the SharePoint Developer Support team

A while back, I wrote an article explaining that you must use File Chunking if you want to upload files larger than 250 MB to SharePoint or OneDrive for Business, using either the SharePoint REST API or CSOM.  This is because the file upload limit is set in the service and cannot be changed.  Using the Microsoft Graph API is even more restrictive.  The file size limit for uploading files is so small (4 MB) that you really should always use the chunking method, but the implementation is a little different than it is with the SharePoint REST API.  Also, to get an access token for Graph you will always need to use an Azure AD authorization endpoint.

At the bottom of this post you find links to two examples of how to upload larger file using Graph – one that uses plain JavaScript and jQuery and the other using a simple Angular 4 framework.  These examples both use Azure v2.0 authentication protocols documented at: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/develop/active-directory-v2-protocols .  This means you can use the same code to access resources with either your organizational credentials (such as for SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business document libraries) or your Microsoft account credentials (such as OneDrive Personal document or contacts).



The Basics

The main operation you need is /createUploadSession. The details of the API are clearly documented here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/developer/rest-api/api/driveitem_createuploadsession#create-an-upload-session

You’ll need to write more code than you may expect, to do this correctly.

Here are the main steps you need to perform to upload a file using the /createUploadSession approach: