Gergely Orosz

Recently I wanted to implement a very simple file upload component in Silverlight that uploads a single file and if possible shows upload progress. Having done some search I’ve found numerous examples but all of them seemed too complex for the simple task of uploading a file so I implemented a really lightweight solution. The source code can be downloaded from here: SimpleFileUpload_v2.zip

Uploading files in Silverlight

Uploading files is quite an easy one in Silverlight: it’s basically just a request made to another server and the file contents are passed in this request. A possible way of implementing this is by using the WebClient class:

private void UploadFile()
{
FileStream _data; // The file stream to be read
string uploadUri;
 
byte[] fileContent = new byte[_data.Length]; // Read the contents of the stream into a byte array
int bytesRead = _data.Read(fileContent, 0, CHUNK_SIZE);
 
WebClient wc = new WebClient();
wc.OpenWriteCompleted += new OpenWriteCompletedEventHandler(wc_OpenWriteCompleted);
Uri u = new Uri(uploadUri);
wc.OpenWriteAsync(u, null, new object[] { fileContent, bytesRead }); // Upload the file to the server
}
 
void wc_OpenWriteCompleted(object sender, OpenWriteCompletedEventArgs e) // The upload completed
{
if (e.Error == null)
{
  // Upload completed without error
}

Upload Progress Indicator

The above solution does the job of uploading the file well. However it does not indicate file upload progress at all: when uploading large files or when having slow internet connection this behaviour would be desirable.

Silverlight has no built-in way to monitor the number of bytes sent which means that the only way to indicate upload progress is sending the file to the server in multiple, smaller chunks. Of course this behaviour needs support from the server side as well.

The idea is that multiple calls are made to the server, every call submitting the next chunk of the file. On the server these chunks are appended to the file.

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