C# – Path To Files Inside Content Folder (ASP.NET MVC)

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There something I still do not understand about how the Content folder works in ASP.NET MVC. To make things clearer I have a few questions:

Is the Content folder the root folder? I mean does http://localhost/ point to Content or is it something else?
I have a file named dummyIcon.png inside Content/images/temp folder. How do I locate it from my domain layer (which is a Code Library project)?
What is the best practice of displaying images in ASP.NET MVC? Should I store a path to the image in the database (which I personally prefer), or do I save a byte array and return it to the view?

I found the following links to be helpful within the context of the MVC web application, but I'd still appreciate some answers to the questions posted above. Thank you.

Can an ASP.NET MVC controller return an Image?

how to display image using view and controller by ASP.NET MVC

Best Answer

Anything in the root will point to the root if it is ignored by your routes:

If you have an image placed on the on the root of your project. Then, say http:://localhost/dummy.ico" will give you a 404, no controller found. Until you do this in your global.asax.cs:
```
routes.IgnoreRoute("dummy.ico");
//you could add wildcards here to match different things
```
From Code if you use says File.Open(); you need the physical path to the file. You get it like this:
```
string filePath = Server.MapPath(Url.Content("~/Content/Images/Image.jpg"));
```
It is upto you here, although I would say, putting files into the database makes a lot of sense if you want everything in one place. If you need to move your app around you would just move the data base.

When it comes to file paths, please remember you don't want duplicate file names, so you will have to give each file a GUID and then link it up. It could make sense if you have a large number of files (or large files itself) so you're database won't grow like crazy.

HTH

Related Solutions

Asp.net-mvc – Compile Views in ASP.NET MVC

From the readme word doc for RC1 (not indexed by google)

ASP.NET Compiler Post-Build Step

Currently, errors within a view file are not detected until run time. To let you detect these errors at compile time, ASP.NET MVC projects now include an MvcBuildViews property, which is disabled by default. To enable this property, open the project file and set the MvcBuildViews property to true, as shown in the following example:

<Project ToolsVersion="3.5" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
  </PropertyGroup>

Note Enabling this feature adds some overhead to the build time.

You can update projects that were created with previous releases of MVC to include build-time validation of views by performing the following steps:

Open the project file in a text editor.
Add the following element under the top-most <PropertyGroup> element: <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
At the end of the project file, uncomment the <Target Name="AfterBuild"> element and modify it to match the following:

<Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(MvcBuildViews)'=='true'">
    <AspNetCompiler VirtualPath="temp" PhysicalPath="$(ProjectDir)\..\$(ProjectName)" />
</Target>

C# – How to create a dropdownlist from an enum in ASP.NET MVC

For MVC v5.1 use Html.EnumDropDownListFor

@Html.EnumDropDownListFor(
    x => x.YourEnumField,
    "Select My Type", 
    new { @class = "form-control" })

For MVC v5 use EnumHelper

@Html.DropDownList("MyType", 
   EnumHelper.GetSelectList(typeof(MyType)) , 
   "Select My Type", 
   new { @class = "form-control" })

For MVC 5 and lower

I rolled Rune's answer into an extension method:

namespace MyApp.Common
{
    public static class MyExtensions{
        public static SelectList ToSelectList<TEnum>(this TEnum enumObj)
            where TEnum : struct, IComparable, IFormattable, IConvertible
        {
            var values = from TEnum e in Enum.GetValues(typeof(TEnum))
                select new { Id = e, Name = e.ToString() };
            return new SelectList(values, "Id", "Name", enumObj);
        }
    }
}

This allows you to write:

ViewData["taskStatus"] = task.Status.ToSelectList();

by using MyApp.Common