Easiest way to upload a collection of files to a server

Took the code above and fixed because it throws Internal Server Error 500. There are some problems with \r\n badly positioned and spaces etc. Applied the refactoring with memory stream, writing directly to the request stream. Here is the result:

    public static void HttpUploadFile(string url, string file, string paramName, string contentType, NameValueCollection nvc) {
        log.Debug(string.Format("Uploading {0} to {1}", file, url));
        string boundary = "---------------------------" + DateTime.Now.Ticks.ToString("x");
        byte[] boundarybytes = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes("\r\n--" + boundary + "\r\n");

        HttpWebRequest wr = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
        wr.ContentType = "multipart/form-data; boundary=" + boundary;
        wr.Method = "POST";
        wr.KeepAlive = true;
        wr.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;

        Stream rs = wr.GetRequestStream();

        string formdataTemplate = "Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"{0}\"\r\n\r\n{1}";
        foreach (string key in nvc.Keys)
        {
            rs.Write(boundarybytes, 0, boundarybytes.Length);
            string formitem = string.Format(formdataTemplate, key, nvc[key]);
            byte[] formitembytes = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(formitem);
            rs.Write(formitembytes, 0, formitembytes.Length);
        }
        rs.Write(boundarybytes, 0, boundarybytes.Length);

        string headerTemplate = "Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"{0}\"; filename=\"{1}\"\r\nContent-Type: {2}\r\n\r\n";
        string header = string.Format(headerTemplate, paramName, file, contentType);
        byte[] headerbytes = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(header);
        rs.Write(headerbytes, 0, headerbytes.Length);

        FileStream fileStream = new FileStream(file, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
        byte[] buffer = new byte[4096];
        int bytesRead = 0;
        while ((bytesRead = fileStream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) != 0) {
            rs.Write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
        }
        fileStream.Close();

        byte[] trailer = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes("\r\n--" + boundary + "--\r\n");
        rs.Write(trailer, 0, trailer.Length);
        rs.Close();

        WebResponse wresp = null;
        try {
            wresp = wr.GetResponse();
            Stream stream2 = wresp.GetResponseStream();
            StreamReader reader2 = new StreamReader(stream2);
            log.Debug(string.Format("File uploaded, server response is: {0}", reader2.ReadToEnd()));
        } catch(Exception ex) {
            log.Error("Error uploading file", ex);
            if(wresp != null) {
                wresp.Close();
                wresp = null;
            }
        } finally {
            wr = null;
        }
    }

and sample usage:

    NameValueCollection nvc = new NameValueCollection();
    nvc.Add("id", "TTR");
    nvc.Add("btn-submit-photo", "Upload");
    HttpUploadFile("http://your.server.com/upload", 
         @"C:\test\test.jpg", "file", "image/jpeg", nvc);

It could be extended to handle multiple files or just call it multiple times for each file. However it suits your needs.

The standard form-based file upload doesn’t work for you since files are uploaded in a single HTTP POST requests.

1. Web servers cannot normally accept large HTTP requests.
2. The upload process is long. If there is a connection problem, the user has to start over.

If you are looking for a solution built into the website, you should consider using some upload component which can shrink files to chunks client-side, send each chunk in a separate request and put together files on server. These components work as browser extensions. Even though everybody is obsessed with HTML5 these days and nobody likes Java applets and ActiveX components, Java/ActiveX suits best for your task.