European Windows 2012 Hosting BLOG

BLOG about Windows 2012 Hosting and SQL 2012 Hosting - Dedicated to European Windows Hosting Customer

European FREE ASP.NET 4.5 Hosting UK - HostForLIFE.eu :: Sending additional form data in multipart uploads with ASP.NET Web API

clock March 20, 2014 06:10 by author Peter

If you've used ASP.NET MVC you'll be used to being able to easily process multipart form data on the server by virtue of the ASP.NET MVC model binder. Unfortunately things are not quite so simple in ASP.NET Web API. Most of the examples I have seen demonstrate how to upload a file but do not cover how to send additional form data with the request. The example below (taken from the Fabrik API Client) demonstrates how to upload a file using HttpClient:

public async Task<IEnumerable<MediaUploadResult>> UploadMedia(int siteId, params UploadMediaCommand[] commands)

{

    Ensure.Argument.NotNull(commands, "commands");

    Ensure.Argument.Is(commands.Length > 0, "You must provide at least one file to upload.");

    var formData = new MultipartFormDataContent();

    foreach (var command in commands)

    {

        formData.Add(new StreamContent(command.FileStream), command.FileName, command.FileName);

    }

    var request = api.CreateRequest(HttpMethod.Post, api.CreateRequestUri(GetMediaPath(siteId)));

    request.Content = formData;

    var response = await api.HttpClient.SendAsync(request).ConfigureAwait(false);

    return await response.Content.ReadAsAsync<IEnumerable<MediaUploadResult>>().ConfigureAwait(false);

}

The UploadMediaCommand passed to this method contain a Stream object that we've obtained from an uploaded file in ASP.NET MVC. As you can see, we loop through each command (file) and add it to the MultipartFormDataContent. This effectively allows us to perform multiple file uploads at once. When making some changes to our API recently I realized we needed a way to correlate the files we uploaded with the MediaUploadResult objects sent back in the response. We therefore needed to send a unique identifier for each file included in the multipart form.

Since the framework doesn't really offer a nice way of adding additional form data to MultiPartFormDataContent, I've created a few extension methods below that you can use to easily send additional data with your file uploads.

/// <summary>

/// Extensions for <see cref="System.Net.Http.MultipartFormDataContent"/>.

/// </summary>

public static class MultiPartFormDataContentExtensions

{      

    public static void Add(this MultipartFormDataContent form, HttpContent content, object formValues)

    {       

        Add(form, content, formValues);

    }

    public static void Add(this MultipartFormDataContent form, HttpContent content, string name, object formValues)

    {

        Add(form, content, formValues, name: name);

    }

     public static void Add(this MultipartFormDataContent form, HttpContent content, string name, string fileName, object formValues)

    {

        Add(form, content, formValues, name: name, fileName: fileName);

    }

    private static void Add(this MultipartFormDataContent form, HttpContent content, object formValues, string name = null, string fileName = null)

    {        

        var header = new ContentDispositionHeaderValue("form-data");

        header.Name = name;

        header.FileName = fileName;

        header.FileNameStar = fileName;

        var headerParameters = new HttpRouteValueDictionary(formValues);

        foreach (var parameter in headerParameters)

       {

            header.Parameters.Add(new NameValueHeaderValue(parameter.Key, parameter.Value.ToString()));

        }

         content.Headers.ContentDisposition = header;

        form.Add(content);

    }

}

With these extensions in place I can now update our API client to do the following:foreach (var command in commands)

{

    formData.Add(

        new StreamContent(command.FileStream),

        command.FileName, command.FileName,

        new {

            CorrelationId = command.CorrelationId,

            PreserveFileName = command.PreserveFileName

        }

    );

}

This sets the content disposition header like so:

Content-Disposition: form-data;

    name=CS_touch_icon.png;

    filename=CS_touch_icon.png;

    filename*=utf-8''CS_touch_icon.png;

    CorrelationId=d4ddd5fb-dc14-4e93-9d87-babfaca42353;

    PreserveFileName=False

On the API, to read we can loop through each file in the upload and access the additional data like so:

foreach (var file in FileData) {

    var contentDisposition = file.Headers.ContentDisposition;

    var correlationId = GetNameHeaderValue(contentDisposition.Parameters, "CorrelationId");

}

Using the following helper method:

private static string GetNameHeaderValue(ICollection<NameValueHeaderValue> headerValues, string name)

{          

    if (headerValues == null)

        return null;

    var nameValueHeader = headerValues.FirstOrDefault(x => x.Name.Equals(name, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase));

    return nameValueHeader != null ? nameValueHeader.Value : null;

}

In case you were interested below is the updated code we are using to process the uploaded files within ASP.NET MVC:

[HttpPost]

public async Task<ActionResult> Settings(SiteSettingsModel model)

{

    await HandleFiles(new[] {

        Tuple.Create<HttpPostedFileBase, Action<string>>(model.LogoFile, uri => model.LogoUri = uri),

        Tuple.Create<HttpPostedFileBase, Action<string>>(model.IconFile, uri => model.IconUri = uri ),

        Tuple.Create<HttpPostedFileBase, Action<string>>(model.FaviconFile, uri => model.FaviconUri = uri)

    });

    await siteClient.UpdateSiteSettings(Customer.CurrentSite, model);

    return RedirectToAction("settings")

        .AndAlert(AlertType.Success, "Success!", "Your site settings were updated successfully.");

}

private async Task HandleFiles(Tuple<HttpPostedFileBase, Action<string>>[] files)

{

    var uploadRequests = (from file in files

                          where file.Item1.IsValid() // ensures a valid file

                          let correlationId = Guid.NewGuid().ToString()

                          select new

                          {

                              CorrelationId = correlationId,

                              Command = file.Item1.ToUploadMediaCommand(correlationId),

                              OnFileUploaded = file.Item2

                          }).ToList();

    if (uploadRequests.Any())

    {

        var results = await mediaClient.UploadMedia(Customer.CurrentSite,

            uploadRequests.Select(u => u.Command).ToArray());

         foreach (var result in results)

        {

            // find the original request using the correlation id

            var request = uploadRequests.FirstOrDefault(r => r.CorrelationId == result.CorrelationId);

            if (request != null)

            {

                request.OnFileUploaded(result.Uri);

            }

        }

   }

}



ASP.NET Spain Hosting - HostForLIFE.eu :: ASP.NET App Suspend in ASP.NET 4.5.1

clock February 10, 2014 06:11 by author Peter

Suspend is the new terminate

ASP.NET App Suspend is a new feature in the .NET Framework 4.5.1 that makes ASP.NET sites much more responsive and enables you to host more sites on a single server. It is very well suited for commercial web hosters, like Windows Azure Web Sites, and Enterprise IT web hosting. HostForLIFE.eu proudly launches the support of ASP.NET 4.5.1 on all their newest Windows Server environment. HostForLIFE.eu ASP.NET 4.5.1 Spain Hosting plan starts from just as low as €3.00/month only.

ASP.NET App Suspend is a self-tuning mechanism for web hosting, a little bit like CLR GC generations (if you squint). The addition of suspend establishes three states that a site can be in on a given machine. You can see the three states in the diagram, below.

All sites start out as inactive. As sites are requested, they are loaded into memory, become active, and respond to page requests. After sites have been idle, as determined by the timeout setting, they will be suspended. Suspended sites effectively lose access to the CPU, making CPU cycles and most of the memory they were using available for requests to other sites. However, they are kept in a state – this is the new suspended state – by which they can be resumed very quickly and respond to traffic again.

Usage scenarios

- Scenarios that can benefit from ASP.NET App Suspend.

- Shared hosting (commercial hosting or enterprise IT) Companies selling or taking advantage of shared hosting can pack many more sites on a given machine, while providing much more responsive site experience.  Shared web hosting is certainly the most popular kind of hosting you will discover. As the name indicates, the equipment (server) that your particular web site is held on will be shared together with lots of other users. Because of how prevalent this sort of hosting is, the considerably low cost of managing it, and the volume of companies providing this kind of service plan you can get yourself started out for very little cash. Even though shared hosting is ideal for compact or hobby web sites, it’s not at all without it’s negative aspects. These come from the very character of ‘shared’ web hosting, check out the video above to find out more.

- Switch to shared hosting Web site owners can take advantage of low-cost shared hosting while delivering the responsive experience that they want.

- Hot spare for large sites large high-traffic sites can maintain spares in suspend, ready for when one of the servers behind a load balancer goes down (planned or unplanned).

- Disaster recovery large high-traffic sites can maintain spares in suspend in a backup datacenter, ready for when the main data center goes down or otherwise becomes inaccessible.



About HostForLIFE.eu

HostForLIFE.eu is European Windows Hosting Provider which focuses on Windows Platform only. We deliver on-demand hosting solutions including Shared hosting, Reseller Hosting, Cloud Hosting, Dedicated Servers, and IT as a Service for companies of all sizes.

We have offered the latest Windows 2016 Hosting, ASP.NET Core 2.2.1 Hosting, ASP.NET MVC 6 Hosting and SQL 2017 Hosting.


Tag cloud

Sign in