Send and receive large file over streams in ASP.NET Web Api C#

asp.net, asp.net-web-api, c#, stream

Solution

if I send a large file my server gets a "outofmemoryexception"

Well, it's reading the entire stream into memory right here:

byte[] receivedBytes = await Request.Content.ReadAsByteArrayAsync();

What you want to do is copy the stream from one location to another, without loading it all into memory at once. Something like this should work:

[HttpPost]
[ActionName("AddAudio")]
public async Task<IHttpActionResult> AddAudio([FromUri]string name)
{
  try
  {
    string file = Path.Combine(@"C:\Users\username\Desktop\UploadedFiles", fileName);
    using (FileStream fs = new FileStream(file, FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write,
        FileShare.None, 4096, useAsync: true))
    {
      await Request.Content.CopyToAsync(fs);
    }
    return Ok();
  }
  catch (Exception ex)
  {
    return BadRequest("ERROR: Audio could not be saved on server.");
  }
}

Problem

I'm working on a project where I need to send large audio files via streams from a client to a server. I'm using the ASP.NET Web Api to communicate between client and server. My client has a "SendFile" method which I believe works fine, but I don't know how to make my server receive the data I'm sending via a stream. My client code looks like this so far: ``` private const int MAX_CHUNK_SIZE = (1024 * 5000); private HttpWebRequest webRequest = null; private FileStream fileReader = null; private Stream requestStream = null; public bool SendAudio(string uri, string file) { byte[] fileData; fileReader = new FileStream(file, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read); webRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(uri); webRequest.Method = "POST"; webRequest.ContentLength = fileReader.Length; webRequest.Timeout = 600000; webRequest.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials; webRequest.AllowWriteStreamBuffering = false; requestStream = webRequest.GetRequestStream(); long fileSize = fileReader.Length; long remainingBytes = fileSize; int numberOfBytesRead = 0, done = 0; while (numberOfBytesRead < fileSize) { SetByteArray(out fileData, remainingBytes); done = WriteFileToStream(fileData, requestStream); numberOfBytesRead += done; remainingBytes -= done; } fileReader.Close(); return true; } public int WriteFileToStream(byte[] fileData, Stream requestStream) { int done = fileReader.Read(fileData, 0, fileData.Length); requestStream.Write(fileData, 0, fileData.Length); return done; } private void SetByteArray(out byte[] fileData, long bytesLeft) { fileData = bytesLeft < MAX_CHUNK_SIZE ? new byte[bytesLeft] : new byte[MAX_CHUNK_SIZE]; } ``` My server looks like this: ``` [HttpPost] [ActionName("AddAudio")] public async Task<IHttpActionResult> AddAudio([FromUri]string name) { try { isReceivingFile = true; byte[] receivedBytes = await Request.Content.ReadAsByteArrayAsync(); if (WriteAudio(receivedBytes, name) == true) { isReceivingFile = false; return Ok(); } else { isReceivingFile = false; return BadRequest("ERROR: Audio could not be saved on server."); } } catch (Exception ex) { isReceivingFile = false; return BadRequest("ERROR: Audio could not be saved on server."); } } public bool WriteAudio(byte[] receivedBytes, string fileName) { string file = Path.Combine(@"C:\Users\username\Desktop\UploadedFiles", fileName); using (FileStream fs = File.Create(file)) { fs.Write(receivedBytes, 0, receivedBytes.Length); } return true; } ``` The server code has the original code I wrote for it, before deciding to try and make it work with streams. The server code still works if I send a small file (under 30 MB), but if I send a large file my server gets a "outofmemoryexception". I can't figure out how to make the server take in the data via a stream. In my search for solutions I've come across a lot of examples with sockets and TCPClient, but that's not how we want to do it on this project. Can anybody help, please?

Original source