Best practice for Uploading files using MultiFormDataContent in asp.net core

Question

I have an upload api that receives a list of IFiles to upload to a server. I now require an additional string to describe the upload for information details. My current controller looks like:

[HttpPost("UploadFiles")]
public async Task<IActionResult> Post(List<IFormFile> files)
{
   // upload to server and other stuff
}

To access the string, I have changed the controller:

[HttpPost("UploadFiles")]
public async Task<IActionResult> Post(List<IFormFile> files, string uploadDescription)
{
   //some code
}

I now have access to the uploadDescription . When testing this I am sending the files as MultipartFormDataContent , and the description as a query parameter.
Although this works, I am not sure sending query parameters in this way with a post action is best practice or not. Is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

There is no best practice for doing such a Post method, but from my knowledge this is better and readable to pass a unit DTO to your method either Post or Get , so I think it would be better to change it like :

public class FileSpec
{
    public List<IFormFile> Files {get; set;}
    public string UploadDescription {get; set;}
} 

and change your method signature like :

public async Task<IActionResult> Post([FromBody]FileSpec fileSpec)

anyway this is depend on yourself you pass parameters separately or pass them as a DTO.

you can also read more about parameter binding here .