How To Accept a File POST

Question

I\'m using asp.net mvc 4 webapi beta to build a rest service. I need to be able to accept POSTed images/files from client applications. Is this possible using the webapi?

Answer 1

Here are two ways to accept a file. One using in memory provider MultipartMemoryStreamProvider and one using MultipartFormDataStreamProvider which saves to a disk. Note, this is only for one file upload at a time. You can certainty extend this to save multiple-files. The second approach can support large files. I've tested files over 200MB and it works fine. Using in memory approach does not require you to save to disk, but will throw out of memory exception if you exceed a certain limit.

private async Task ReadStream()
{
    Stream stream = null;
    var provider = new MultipartMemoryStreamProvider();
    await Request.Content.ReadAsMultipartAsync(provider);
    foreach (var file in provider.Contents)
    {
        var buffer = await file.ReadAsByteArrayAsync();
        stream = new MemoryStream(buffer);
    }

    return stream;
}

private async Task ReadLargeStream()
{
    Stream stream = null;
    string root = Path.GetTempPath();
    var provider = new MultipartFormDataStreamProvider(root);
    await Request.Content.ReadAsMultipartAsync(provider);
    foreach (var file in provider.FileData)
    {
        var path = file.LocalFileName;
        byte[] content = File.ReadAllBytes(path);
        File.Delete(path);
        stream = new MemoryStream(content);
    }

    return stream;
}