client.js

var xhr, form_data = new FormData();

xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open("POST","http://barfoo.com/upload");
xhr.setRequestHeader("Content-Type","multipart/form-data");
xhr.setRequestHeader("File-Name",file.name);
xhr.setRequestHeader("File-Size",(file.size || file.fileSize));
xhr.setRequestHeader("File-Type",file.type);
xhr.setRequestHeader("Session-ID",12345);

xhr.onreadystatechange = function __xhr_onreadystatechange__(){
	if (xhr.readyState == 4) {
		xhr.onreadystatechange = null;
		if (xhr.status != 200 || xhr.responseText != "OK") {
			alert("Sorry, upload failed for: " + (file.name || "[unknown file]"));
		}
		xhr = null;
	}
};
form_data.append(file.name,file);
xhr.send(form_data);

nodejs-formidable-error.txt

events.js:66
        throw arguments[1]; // Unhandled 'error' event
                       ^
Error: bad content-type header, no multipart boundary
    at IncomingForm._parseContentType (/path/to/node_modules/formidable/lib/incoming_form.js:233:19)
    at IncomingForm.writeHeaders (/path/to/node_modules/formidable/lib/incoming_form.js:131:8)
    at IncomingForm.parse (/path/to/node_modules/formidable/lib/incoming_form.js:84:8)

request-body.txt

Content-Type:multipart/form-data
File-Name:blah.jpg
File-Size:29080
File-Type:image/jpeg
Origin:http://foobar.com
Referer:http://foobar.com/blah/
Session-ID:12345
User-Agent:Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_4) AppleWebKit/537.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/22.0.1215.0 Safari/537.2
Request Payload
------WebKitFormBoundary3KzOjhaAGvJbm65r
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="blah.jpg"; filename="blah.jpg"
Content-Type: image/jpeg


------WebKitFormBoundary3KzOjhaAGvJbm65r--

server.js

// handle the HTTP routing
function handleHTTP(req, res) {
	// handle file uploads
	if (req.url == "/upload") {
		// handle the CORS preflight request for the upload
		if (req.method.toLowerCase() == "options" && req.headers["access-control-request-method"].toLowerCase() == "post") {
			res.writeHead(200,CORS_POST_HEADERS);
			res.end();
			return;
		}
		// are we doing a POST upload?
		else if (req.method.toLowerCase() == "post") {
			// add the CORS POST headers
			for (header in CORS_POST_HEADERS) {
				res.setHeader(header,CORS_POST_HEADERS[header]);
			}

			// parse a file upload
			var form = new formidable.IncomingForm();
			form.parse(req,function __form_parse_cb__(err,fields,files) {
				if (err) {
					res.writeHead(500, {"Content-Type": "text/plain"});
					res.end();
					console.log("upload err: " + JSON.stringify(err));
				}
				else {
					console.log(JSON.stringify(files));

					res.writeHead(200, {"Content-Type": "text/plain"});
					res.write("OK");
					res.end();
				}
			});
			return;
		}
		// otherwise, bail because we won't handle this kind of request!
		else {
			// add the CORS POST headers
			for (header in CORS_POST_HEADERS) {
				res.setHeader(header,CORS_POST_HEADERS[header]);
			}

			res.writeHead(403,{"Content-Type": "text/plain"});
			res.end();
			return;
		}
	}
	return false;
}

require("http").createServer(handleHTTP).listen(80);

Here's the error: https://github.com/felixge/node-formidable/blob/master/lib/incoming_form.js#L242

Seems like your content type should have boundary in it somewhere.

Ah, that makes sense. I guess the browser generates a random boundary value and appends it to the content-type. @getify have you tried leaving the content-type off to see if the xhr does the right thing? If not, you'll have to find a way to get the generated boundary and append it to the content-type. Or you'll have to generate your own boundary value and have the body use that value. I'd be interested to know how you got this working.

I took out the setting of the the content-type on the XHR object, and sure enough the browser automatically sets the content-type, including the boundary, and all works fine. Thanks for the hint, @polotek and @alFReD-NSH!

Side note: apparently you have to return CORS headers on every single response, not just in response to the preflight OPTIONS request. Had to fix that too.