Question

My office uses a piece of software that generates XML based reports. These reports also reference images files which are created during the generation of a report.

I’m trying to develop an ASP.NET MVC web app that will allow users to share and collaborate on these reports. The site will read the XML data into a database, as well as store the images files to be viewed on the site.

However, the problem I’m having now is the reporting software generates many more images then are actually needed by my site. After reading through the XML report data my site will typically find that it really only needs a few images uploaded out of all images that were exported by the software.

I don’t want to waste bandwidth or time by having the user upload every single image to the site, as most would end up just being deleted after the site reads through the XML file.

Is there any other way to allow a web-app to selectively upload files from a users computer? Ultimately I would like for the site to be able to read in the XML report file, determine what image files it needs, and then proceed to upload only those images.

Could this be accomplished through java script in the page? What about a silver light?

I know I could develop a stand alone executable that would handle parsing the XML and uploading the images. But I’m trying to avoid requiring the user to install anything to use this site.

Answer 1

unfortunately for security reason it’s not very easy to have a web app access the local drive and copy files to the server. However, here are some suggestions:

• Create an activeX that has full access to the users computer. (IE Only, has to be installed) basic activex, old example to upload files.
• Create an applet, similar to ActiveX (cross browser). Example
• Completely different idea, but maybe a bit simpler, you could have the user upload the xml, the server would determine which images it needs and display it to the user. The user could then do a multiple file upload of just the files you listed.

Best of luck.