Serve static files from controller

Question

I have a .net 6 app that reads files from different zip files on startup and converts them to a list of Resources :

public class Resource
{
    public string? Id { get; set; }
    public string? MimeType { get; set; }
    public byte[] Data { get; set; } = Array.Empty<byte>();
}

Currently, I just keep them in a dictionary in memory and serve them from a controller:

[HttpGet("{id}")]
public IActionResult GetResource(string id)
{
    var resource = _resourceRepository.Get(id);

    return File(resource.Data, resource.MimeType!);
}

I would like to incorporate the static file management in the.net framework, but preferably retain the controller so that the clients can get resources using a GET resource/id .

I tried to use app.UseStaticFiles , set the RequestPath to "resource" and store the files without extension and set ServeUnknownFileTypes = true which works, I would prefer to keep the extensions to be able to browse the folders manually and keep the content-type header.

Is there any way to manage this through the controller?

Answer 1

I think you already knew that configuring static files middleware is necessary,

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/as.net/core/fundamentals/static-files?view=as.netcore-7.0

But you probably didn't notice that you can write your own file provider (instead of the default PhysicalFileProvider ),

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/as.net/core/fundamentals/file-providers?view=as.netcore-7.0

Microsoft ships an example of ManifestEmbeddedFileProvider but it might not work the way you like, so you'd better create your own.