How to convert a file into byte array in memory?

Question

Here is my code:

 public async Task<IActionResult> Index(ICollection<IFormFile> files)  {     foreach (var file in files)         uploaddb(file);         var uploads = Path.Combine(_environment.WebRootPath, "uploads");     foreach (var file in files)     {         if (file.Length > 0)         {             var fileName = ContentDispositionHeaderValue.Parse(file.ContentDisposition).FileName.Trim('"');              await file.SaveAsAsync(Path.Combine(uploads, fileName));         }     } } 

Now I am converting this file into byte array using this code:

var filepath = Path.Combine(_environment.WebRootPath, "uploads/Book1.xlsx"); byte[] fileBytes = System.IO.File.ReadAllBytes(filepath); string s = Convert.ToBase64String(fileBytes); 

And then I am uploading this code into my nosql database.This is all working fine but the problem is i don't want to save the file. Instead of that i want to directly upload the file into my database. And it can be possible if i can just convert the file into byte array directly without saving it.

public async Task<IActionResult> Index(ICollection<IFormFile> files) {     foreach (var file in files)         uploaddb(file);        var uploads = Path.Combine(_environment.WebRootPath, "uploads");     foreach (var file in files)     {         if (file.Length > 0)         {             var fileName = ContentDispositionHeaderValue.Parse(file.ContentDisposition).FileName.Trim('"');  ///Code to Convert the file into byte array } 

Answer 1

As opposed to saving the data as a string (which allocates more memory than needed and might not work if the binary data has null bytes in it), I would recommend an approach more like

foreach (var file in files) {   if (file.Length > 0)   {     using (var ms = new MemoryStream())     {       file.CopyTo(ms);       var fileBytes = ms.ToArray();       string s = Convert.ToBase64String(fileBytes);       // act on the Base64 data     }   } } 

Also, for the benefit of others, the source code for IFormFile can be found on GitHub

Answer 2

You can just write a simple extension:

public static class FormFileExtensions {     public static async Task<byte[]> GetBytes(this IFormFile formFile)     {         using (var memoryStream = new MemoryStream())         {             await formFile.CopyToAsync(memoryStream);             return memoryStream.ToArray();         }     } } 

Usage

var bytes = await formFile.GetBytes(); var hexString = Convert.ToBase64String(bytes);