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)
    {
        await using var memoryStream = new MemoryStream();
        await formFile.CopyToAsync(memoryStream);
        return memoryStream.ToArray();
    }
}

Usage

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

Answer 3

You can use the following code to convert it to a byte array:

foreach (var file in files)
{
   if (file.Length > 0)
    {
      var fileName = ContentDispositionHeaderValue.Parse(file.ContentDisposition).FileName.Trim('"');
      using (var reader = new StreamReader(file.OpenReadStream()))
      {
        string contentAsString = reader.ReadToEnd();
        byte[] bytes = new byte[contentAsString.Length * sizeof(char)];
        System.Buffer.BlockCopy(contentAsString.ToCharArray(), 0, bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
      }
   }
}