Introduction
In this article, let us see how to convert a file content to a byte array, restore the original content from the byte array, and display it in its original file formats such as pdf, doc, xls, rtf, jpeg, png, etc.
Convert a file content to a byte array
Step 1. Create an ASP.Net application and add a class Document.
public class Document
{
public int DocId { get; set; }
public string DocName { get; set; }
public byte[] DocContent { get; set; }
}
Step 2. Create a format doc/pdf/rtf file and convert the file content to a ByteArray using the following method. Then create an object of type Document and assign the Docname and DocContent property values from the filename and filecontent.
public Document FileToByteArray(string fileName)
{
byte[] fileContent = null;
System.IO.FileStream fs = new System.IO.FileStream(fileName, System.IO.FileMode.Open, System.IO.FileAccess.Read);
System.IO.BinaryReader binaryReader = new System.IO.BinaryReader(fs);
long byteLength = new System.IO.FileInfo(fileName).Length;
fileContent = binaryReader.ReadBytes((Int32)byteLength);
fs.Close();
fs.Dispose();
binaryReader.Close();
Document = new Document();
Document.DocName = fileName;
Document.DocContent = fileContent;
return Document;
}
Convert a byte array to file content
Step 3. Now we need to revert the byte array to the file content and display it to the user with download options. For that, I am using another method, ShowDocument, as below.
private void ShowDocument(string fileName, byte[] fileContent)
{
//Split the string by character . to get file extension type
string[] stringParts = fileName.Split(new char[] { '.' });
string strType = stringParts[1];
Response.Clear();
Response.ClearContent();
Response.ClearHeaders();
Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "attachment; filename=" + fileName);
//Set the content type as file extension type
Response.ContentType = strType;
//Write the file content
this.Response.BinaryWrite(fileContent);
this.Response.End();
}
Step 4. In the page_load event, I have the following code: read the contents from the file and convert it to a ByteArray using the FileToByteArray method, and convert it back to content using the ShowDocument method.
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
FileToByteArray("C:\\Users\\santhosh.kumar\\Documents\\Test for rht format.rtf");
ShowDocument(Document.DocName, Document.DocContent);
}
Summary
This article taught us how to convert files to Byte Arrays and Byte Arrays to Files. For the complete source code, please find the attached solution.
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