Today, at work, I spent quite a long time on figuring out, how to handle file upload, image to be exact, from angular2 app to backend in ASP.NET Core. I thought it’s a good idea for a post - maybe it will save you some time.

Problem

I want to have a component in angular2 which will display a form with a file selector and the submit button. This form will post the file to a backend in ASP.NET Core, which will handle the file and save it somewhere.

Angular2 frontend part

Form

First thing you need is a form to select a file:

<input # fileInput type= "file" /> <button ( click )=" addFile ()" > Add </button>

That’s all you need - file input and a button to trigger the upload.

Angular2 Component

Next, you have to handle the upload in your Angular component:

@ ViewChild ( "fileInput" ) fileInput ; addFile () : void { let fi = this . fileInput . nativeElement ; if ( fi . files && fi . files [ 0 ]) { let fileToUpload = fi . files [ 0 ]; this . uploadService . upload ( fileToUpload ) . subscribe ( res => { console . log ( res ); }); } }

@ViewChild is a reference to the file input in our template. First thing in the addFile() method, we’re reading it, selecting a file to upload and passing it to upload service.

Angular2 Upload Service

upload ( fileToUpload : any ) { let input = new FormData (); input . append ( "file" , fileToUpload ); return this . http . post ( "/api/uploadFile" , input ); }

This is the part that took me long time to figure (google) out. At first I tried to pass fileToUpload as a param to http POST request, but then it wasn’t creating multipart request and ASP.NET wasn’t handling it correctly. The FormData is needed for it to happen. I think the rest is self explanatory.

Handling upload in ASP.NET Core

This again looks easy… when you know how to use it :)

[HttpPost] [Route("/api/upload")] public async Task Upload ( IFormFile file ) { if ( file == null ) throw new Exception ( "File is null" ); if ( file . Length == 0 ) throw new Exception ( "File is empty" ); using ( Stream stream = file . OpenReadStream ()) { using ( var binaryReader = new BinaryReader ( stream )) { var fileContent = binaryReader . ReadBytes (( int ) file . Length ); await _uploadService . AddFile ( fileContent , file . FileName , file . ContentType ); } } }

It is a bit different than how it looked in previous versions of ASP.NET. Instead of working with HttpContect, we are using IFormFile object, which contains all the informations about the uploaded file. If you want to handle multiple files, you can change the param to ICollection<IFormFile>. The thing which is crucial for it to work is the parameter name. I was banging my head for an hour, because it wasn’t working. Turned out, I used different name in Angular and different here. The input name in POST must be the same as method param in ASP.NET. The rest is easy - we get the file stream, which we can use to read the files content and other params are available in the IFormFile object.

Summary

As you see, it’s quite easy to implement, when you know how. I hope this post will save someone time of working out how to accomplish that.

If you’re interested in Angular2 or ASP.NET Core, I will definitely be posting more about these two. Sign up for email newsletter, or follow my twitter or facebook not to miss anything. Next week, I will publish a post on my way of bringing ASP.NET Core and Angular2 together.