Limit the size of a file upload (html input element)

This is completely possible. Use Javascript.

I use jQuery to select the input element. I have it set up with an on change event.

$("#aFile_upload").on("change", function (e) {

    var count=1;
    var files = e.currentTarget.files; // puts all files into an array

    // call them as such; files[0].size will get you the file size of the 0th file
    for (var x in files) {

        var filesize = ((files[x].size/1024)/1024).toFixed(4); // MB

        if (files[x].name != "item" && typeof files[x].name != "undefined" && filesize <= 10) { 

            if (count > 1) {

                approvedHTML += ", "+files[x].name;
            }
            else {

                approvedHTML += files[x].name;
            }

            count++;
        }
    }
    $("#approvedFiles").val(approvedHTML);

});

The code above saves all the file names that I deem worthy of persisting to the submission page, before the submit actually happens. I add the "approved" files to an input element's val using jQuery so a form submit will send the names of the files I want to save. All the files will be submitted, however, now on the server side we do have to filter these out. I haven't written any code for that yet, but use your imagination. I assume one can accomplish this by a for loop and matching the names sent over from the input field and match them to the $_FILES(PHP Superglobal, sorry I dont know ruby file variable) variable.

My point is you can do checks for files before submission. I do this and then output it to the user before he/she submits the form, to let them know what they are uploading to my site. Anything that doesn't meet the criteria does not get displayed back to the user and therefore they should know, that the files that are too large wont be saved. This should work on all browsers because I'm not using FormData object.

var uploadField = document.getElementById("file");

uploadField.onchange = function() {
    if(this.files[0].size > 2097152){
       alert("File is too big!");
       this.value = "";
    };
};

This example should work fine. I set it up for roughly 2MB, 1MB in Bytes is 1,048,576 so you can multiply it by the limit you need.

Here is the jsfiddle example for more clearence:
https://jsfiddle.net/7bjfr/808/