Passing the uploaded file path to controller action using uploadify - asp.net-mvc-3

Question

I'm using uploadify in my MVC3 project. It works fine to upload multiple files and saving to folders as well.
How to pass the path of the uploaded file to controller action ? -- I need to pass it to the ExtractingZip action of my controller.
To extract the contents of the .zip file, I'm using DotNetZip Library.
Here is what i've tried so far.
$('#file_upload').uploadify({
'checkExisting': 'Content/uploadify/check-exists.php',
'swf': '/Content/uploadify/uploadify.swf',
'uploader': '/Home/Index',
'auto': false,
'buttonText': 'Browse',
'fileTypeExts': '*.jpg;*.jpeg;*.png;*.gif;*.zip',
'removeCompleted': false,
'onSelect': function (file) {
if (file.type == ".zip") {
debugger;
$.ajax({
type: 'POST',
dataType: 'json',
url: '#Url.Action("ExtractingZip", "Home")',
data: ({ fileName: file.name}), // I dont see a file.path to pass it to controller
success: function (result) {
alert('Success');
},
error: function (result) {
alert('error');
}
});
}
}
});
Here is my controller action:
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult ExtractingZip(string fileName,string filePath, HttpPostedFileBase fileData)
{
string zipToUnpack = #"C:\Users\Public\Pictures\Sample Pictures\images.zip";// I'm unable to get the filePath so i'm using the path.
string unpackDirectory = System.IO.Path.GetTempPath();
using (ZipFile zip1 = ZipFile.Read(zipToUnpack))
{
// here, we extract every entry, but we could extract conditionally
// based on entry name, size, date, checkbox status, etc.
var collections = zip1.SelectEntries("name=*.jpg;*.jpeg;*.png;*.gif;");
foreach (var item in collections)
{
item.Extract(unpackDirectory, ExtractExistingFileAction.OverwriteSilently);
}
}
return Json(true);
}
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Index(IEnumerable<HttpPostedFileBase> fileData)
{
foreach (var file in fileData)
{
if (file.ContentLength > 0)
{
string currpath;
currpath = Path.Combine(Server.MapPath("~/Images/User3"), file.FileName);
//save to a physical location
file.SaveAs(currpath);
}
}
}

Answer 1

You don't need to pass the zip's filepath when it's uploaded. The filepath would be from the clients machine right? Your application on your server has no knowledge or access to the clients file system.
The good news is you don't need it. You already have the contents of your file in memory. I have never used donetzip but some quick googling reveals that you can read zips directly from a stream.
Check out these links:
Cannot read zip file from HttpInputStream using DotNetZip 1.9
Extracting zip from stream with DotNetZip
So using those posts as a base to go off of... It looks like you should be able to change your code like so:
string zipToUnpack = #"C:\Users\Public\Pictures\Sample Pictures\images.zip";// I'm unable to get the filePath so i'm using the path.
string unpackDirectory = System.IO.Path.GetTempPath();
using (ZipFile zip1 = ZipFile.Read(zipToUnpack))
{
....
Changes to...
string unpackDirectory = System.IO.Path.GetTempPath();
using (ZipFile zip1 = ZipFile.Read(fileData.InputStream))
{
....
Let me know if that helps.

Answer 2

First of, due to security reasons you have no access directly to clients machine. While a user uploads some files, web browsers make one or tow (usually 1, according to RFC) stream and server-side script reads that stream, so do not waste your time to get files directly from user's local machine's filepath.
To extract archives (s.a: Zip, Rar) I highly recommend you to use SevenZipSharp. It works really good and easy with Streams and also many compression formats.
As they documentation you can extract stream like this:
using (MemoryStream msin = new MemoryStream(fileData.InputStream))
{ ... }