Question

I’m trying to upload files within MVC. Most solution I saw on SO is use webform. I don’t want to use that and personly prefer using streams. How do you implement RESTful file uploading on MVC? Thanks!

Answer 1

Edit: And just when you think you have it all figured out you realise that there is a better way. Check out http://haacked.com/archive/2010/07/16/uploading-files-with-aspnetmvc.aspx

Original:
I am not sure that I understand your question 100%, but I assume that you want to upload a file to a url that looks something like http://{server name}/{Controller}/Upload? This would be implemented exactly like a normal file upload using web forms.

So your controller has an action named upload and looks similar to this:

//For MVC ver 2 use:
[HttpPost]
//For MVC ver 1 use:
//[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Post)] 
public ActionResult Upload()
{
    try
    {
        foreach (HttpPostedFile file in Request.Files)
        {
            //Save to a file
            file.SaveAs(Path.Combine("C:\\File_Store\\", Path.GetFileName(file.FileName)));

            // * OR *
            //Use file.InputStream to access the uploaded file as a stream
            byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
            int read = file.InputStream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
            while (read > 0)
            {
                //do stuff with the buffer
                read = file.InputStream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
            }
        }
        return Json(new { Result = "Complete" });
    }
    catch (Exception)
    {
        return Json(new { Result = "Error" });
    }
}

In this case I am returning Json to indicate success, but you can change this to xml (or anything for that matter) if needed.