MVC audio controls playing song from bytes

Question

I have my songs stored in database as bytes[]. How do I use these in the <audio> tag.

So something like this. Do I need to convert the bytes to something else first? I am not sure.

foreach (var item in Model)
    {
        <audio controls>
            <source [email protected] type="audio/mp3"/>
        </audio>  
    }

Answer 1

One way would be to add a new action in your controller that returns the data:

public ActionResult Audio(int someId)
{
    byte[] songBytes; 
    // Add code to get data
    return new FileStreamResult(songBytes, "audio/mp3");
}

Then put the URL to that into the src attribute:

foreach (var item in Model)
{
    <audio controls>
        <source src="/Controller/Audio/@item.someId" type="audio/mp3"/>
    </audio>  
}

Answer 2

Google chrome/Ipad require support for content-range requests, so to add to given answer here, do something like this:

 public FileStreamResult StreamUploadedSongs(int id)
    {
        byte[] song = db.UploadedSongs.Where(x => x.Id == id).FirstOrDefault().SongBytes;

        long fSize = song.Length;
        long startbyte = 0;
        long endbyte = fSize - 1;
        int statusCode = 200;
        if ((Request.Headers["Range"] != null))
        {
            //Get the actual byte range from the range header string, and set the starting byte.
            string[] range = Request.Headers["Range"].Split(new char[] { '=', '-' });
            startbyte = Convert.ToInt64(range[1]);
            if (range.Length > 2 && range[2] != "") endbyte = Convert.ToInt64(range[2]);
            //If the start byte is not equal to zero, that means the user is requesting partial content.
            if (startbyte != 0 || endbyte != fSize - 1 || range.Length > 2 && range[2] == "")
            { statusCode = 206; }//Set the status code of the response to 206 (Partial Content) and add a content range header.                                    
        }
        long desSize = endbyte - startbyte + 1;
        //Headers
        Response.StatusCode = statusCode;

        Response.ContentType = "audio/mp3";
        Response.AddHeader("Content-Accept", Response.ContentType);
        Response.AddHeader("Content-Length", desSize.ToString());
        Response.AddHeader("Content-Range", string.Format("bytes {0}-{1}/{2}", startbyte, endbyte, fSize));
        //Data

        var stream = new MemoryStream(song, (int)startbyte, (int)desSize);

        return new FileStreamResult(stream, Response.ContentType);
    }