I have a pretty big video file I upload to a web service via multipart/form-data. It takes ~ 30 seconds to arrive and I would prefer not waiting that long simply to access parameters I send along with the file.
My question is simple, can I access parameters sent with the form without waiting for the video payload to be uploaded?
Can this be done using headers or any other methods?
It's about how the webserver is set up. For IIS you can enable Streaming.
Otherwise, by default, IIS will use 'buffering' - the whole request is loaded into memory first (IIS's memory that you can't get to) before your app running in IIS can get it.
Not using IIS? You have to figure out how to get the webserver to do the same thing.
How to stream using IIS:
Streaming large file uploads to ASP.NET MVC
Note the way the file is read in the inner loop:
while ((cbRead = clientRequest.InputStream.Read(rgbBody, 0, rgbBody.Length)) > 0)
{
fileStream.Write(rgbBody, 0, cbRead);
}
Here instead of just saving the data like that question does, you will have to parse any xml/json/etc or whatever contains the file parameters you speak of ... and expect the video to be sent afterwards. You can process them right away if it's a quick process ... then get the rest of the video ... or you can send them to a background thread.
You probably won't be able to parse it just dumping what you have to a json or xml parser, there will be an unclosed tag or } at the top that isn't closed til after the video data is uploaded (however that is done). Or if it's multipart data from a form submission, as you imply, you will have to parse that partial upload yourself, instead of just asking IIS for the post data.
So this will be tricky, you can first start by writing 1k at a time to a log file with a time stamp to prove that you're getting the data as it comes. after that it's just a coding headache.
Getting this to work also means you'll have to have some control over the client and how it sends the data.
That's because you'll at least have to ensure it sends the file parameters FIRST!
Which concerns me, because, if you have control of the client, why can't you take the simple route (as Nobody and Nkosi imply) and use 2 requests? You mention you need one. Why not write js client code to send the parameters first in an XHR and then the file in a second request, using a correlation ID in both to tie them together? (the server could return this from the first request and you could send it in the 2nd).
Obviously, if you're just having a form with some inputs and a file upload and doing submit, then you need one request ;-) But if you have control over the client side you're not stuck with that.
Good luck, there is some advanced programming here, but nothing super high-tech. You will make it work!!!
If you don't have control over the server code, you are probably stuck, if the server app's webserver is buffering, the server app won't get anything, of course, if you wanted to do something with the file parameters first, this really implies you have control of the server side ;-)
