File Upload ASP.NET MVC 3.0

Question

(Preface: this question is about ASP.NET MVC 3.0 which was released in 2011, it is not about ASP.NET Core 3.0 which was released in 2019)

I want to

Answer 1

Alternative method to transfer to byte[] (for saving to DB).

@Arthur's method works pretty good, but doesn't copy perfectly so MS Office documents may fail to open after retrieving them from the database. MemoryStream.GetBuffer() can return extra empty bytes at the end of the byte[], but you can fix that by using MemoryStream.ToArray() instead. However, I found this alternative to work perfectly for all file types:

using (var binaryReader = new BinaryReader(file.InputStream))
{
    byte[] array = binaryReader.ReadBytes(file.ContentLength);
}

Here's my full code:

Document Class:

public class Document
{
    public int? DocumentID { get; set; }
    public string FileName { get; set; }
    public byte[] Data { get; set; }
    public string ContentType { get; set; }
    public int? ContentLength { get; set; }

    public Document()
    {
        DocumentID = 0;
        FileName = "New File";
        Data = new byte[] { };
        ContentType = "";
        ContentLength = 0;
    }
}

File Download:

[HttpGet]
public ActionResult GetDocument(int? documentID)
{
    // Get document from database
    var doc = dataLayer.GetDocument(documentID);

    // Convert to ContentDisposition
    var cd = new System.Net.Mime.ContentDisposition
    {
        FileName = doc.FileName, 

        // Prompt the user for downloading; set to true if you want 
        // the browser to try to show the file 'inline' (display in-browser
        // without prompting to download file).  Set to false if you 
        // want to always prompt them to download the file.
        Inline = true, 
    };
    Response.AppendHeader("Content-Disposition", cd.ToString());

    // View document
    return File(doc.Data, doc.ContentType);
}

File Upload:

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult GetDocument(HttpPostedFileBase file)
{
    // Verify that the user selected a file
    if (file != null && file.ContentLength > 0)
    {
        // Get file info
        var fileName = Path.GetFileName(file.FileName);
        var contentLength = file.ContentLength;
        var contentType = file.ContentType;

        // Get file data
        byte[] data = new byte[] { };
        using (var binaryReader = new BinaryReader(file.InputStream))
        {
            data = binaryReader.ReadBytes(file.ContentLength);
        }

        // Save to database
        Document doc = new Document()
        {
            FileName = fileName,
            Data = data,
            ContentType = contentType,
            ContentLength = contentLength,
        };
        dataLayer.SaveDocument(doc);

        // Show success ...
        return RedirectToAction("Index");
    }
    else
    {
        // Show error ...
        return View("Foo");
    }
}

View (snippet):

@using (Html.BeginForm("GetDocument", "Home", FormMethod.Post, new { enctype = "multipart/form-data" }))
{
    
    
}