Storing files uploaded into SharePoint Libraries/Galleries on the File System

One of the problems with the current version (and previous versions) of SharePoint is the fact that all the files uploaded into SharePoint are stored in the DB no matter what. Now for most scenarios this is great. For example you can store metadata alongside your file, have versioning and approval for you file, use SharePoint's check out and check in features, etc.

The fact that you're storing files in the DB also proves itself useful when your site is running on a server farm. Anyone who has developed a web site on a server farm has experienced the problem where users upload a file (and it gets uploaded into one of the servers) and then a user that hits the other servers can see the file (since we are listing files from a table in the DB) but when they click to download the file they get a FileNotFoundException (brings back memories doesn't it?). The fact that SharePoint stores all files uploaded into the site in the DB completely takes away all server synchronization issues when developing for a server farm.

Enough story telling let's get on with what this post is all about:

Now in certain scenarios (even on a server farm) you might need/want the files that the end user uploads into a SharePoint Library or Gallery to be stored in the file system. In some cases you only want them stored in the file system and in other cases you might just want them replicated in a specific file share on a server. Now a very classic example of this is when your site's content contributors are going to be uploading video/audio files into a secure library (where they only have access to) but you want to make all these files available for online usage through a Streaming Server. In other words you want the public users of the site to be able to playback the video/audio files through an embedded media player that is connected to your sites Streaming Server.

Now as far as I know most streaming servers can stream video/audio that is provided for them in a specific directory (they can't just go poking around in the SharePoint DB for traces of files!) so what can we do. As far as SharePoint support goes well there is none for this requirement. Hopefully the guys over at Microsoft will think of something by the next version/release of SharePoint but for now were stuck with some temporary solution:

Solution: to solve this problem I wrote a list event handler that would sit on the appropriate events of the specific Library. Once a file was added (or updated/deleted) I would perform the appropriate operation in the file system. As an example let's say we want all files added to be copied into our server's c:\StreamSource directory and also deleted from that directory once they are moved off of SharePoint. Before we get into code I should point out that when you upload a file into a SharePoint library the actual upload happens as a two part process. In the first step the file is uploaded and an ItemAdding/ItemAdded is raised then the user is presented with the Meta Data screen for that file and when they enter the meta data and click on the 'Check In' button the ItemUpdating/ItemUpdated event is raised. So if your replication of the file depends on the files meta data the replication has to happen in ItemUpdating (or ItemUpdated). Now for this example I'm going to use ItemUpdating to take care of the file replication:

public class FileReplicatorEventHandler : SPItemEventReceiver

{

public override void ItemUpdating(SPItemEventProperties properties)

{

byte[] content = properties.ListItem.File.OpenBinary();

string[] nameParts = properties.AfterUrl.Split('/');

string fileName = nameParts[nameParts.Length - 1]; //get the filename

using (FileStream fs = new FileStream(@"c:\StreamingSource\" + fileName,

FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write, FileShare.None))

{

fs.Write(content, 0, content.Length);

}

}

}

Now if our end user goes and deletes an item from the library we want to make sure that the associated file in our "c:\streamingSource\" directory is also deleted. So here is the code to take care of that:

public override void ItemDeleting(SPItemEventProperties properties)

{

string[] nameParts = properties.BeforeUrl.Split('/');

string fileName = nameParts[nameParts.Length - 1];

File.Delete(@"c:\StreamingSource\" + fileName);

}

Based on this solution you could write a general component that can take care of any type of file replication on SharePoint. As a matter of fact if I find the time I'll try to create a general component and uploaded it here (or if anyone does it before me comment here so I won't waste my time. J ).