1 in the jsp make a form to handle the upload <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <%@ page import="java.util.List"%> <%@ page import="java.util.ArrayList"%> <%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1"%> <%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/portlet" prefix="portlet"%> <form action="<portlet:actionURL/>" method="post" name="form1" ID="form1" enctype="multipart/form-data"> <input type="file" name ="file"/> <input type="submit" value="submit" /> </form> 2- in the process action method in the portlet class @Override public void processAction(ActionRequest req, ActionResponse res) throws PortletException, IOException { //getting the file