Question

For my CMS I want users to be able to upload pictures which connect to a product. This all goes well until someone wants to upload a picture when creating a new record.

The problem here is that every product has a GUID (next to the ProductID (PK)) and will be created when the product is saved for the first time. I’m uploading my images trough a webservice with Uploadify jquery plugin so it’s all in an ajax based way. The image uploader however needs to know the GUID to store it in the right directory.

My temporary fix was to just let the user save the product before uploading so the GUID is known but it’s not very user friendly and I’m sure there would be a better way but I cannot find a satisfying one myself.

This is the only option which I could come up with which is kinda ok but maybe I’m missing something completely:

• Create a GUID without saving the product, so the image can be uploaded and the product with the GUID can be saved afterwards. But what if the user navigates away after uploading? I could maybe create a scheduled task to delete those orphant images

Has anyone dealt with similar scenarios? I’m very interested in your opions about his matter since this functionality will be used in multiple sections in my CMS.

Thanks for your time!

Kind regards,
Mark

Answer 1

You mostly answered your question by yourself.

The key are temporary files. Here is a little smarter method: save image in a temporary folder and remember the image name in Session object. If the user navigates away, in the Session_End method of Global.asax, delete those images (better said garbage-collect them).

If the user saves the product, permanently store the images and name them accordingly!!