FileSystemProviders Configuration

In Umbraco V8 FileSystemProviders are no longer configured via the fileSystemProviders.config file.

These configuration settings can be set in code during 'Composition' using an IUserComponent

using Umbraco.Core.Composing;
using Umbraco.Core;
using Umbraco.Core.IO;

namespace Umbraco8Examples.Composition
{
    public class SetMediaFileSystemComposer : IUserComposer
    {
        public void Compose(Umbraco.Core.Composing.Composition composition)
        {
            composition.SetMediaFileSystem(() => new PhysicalFileSystem("~/media"));
        }
    }
}

By default Umbraco will save Media in an application folder called /media on the Physical file system.

The media provider can be of many types, for example in case you want to store media on Azure, Amazon or even DB. But the provider that comes by default with the installation of Umbraco is the PhysicalFileSystem provider.

PhysicalFileSystem Configuration

The physical file system provider manages the interaction of Umbraco with the local file system. It can be configured for two different scenarios:

• Media files stored inside a virtual folder of the site
• Media files stored somewhere else outside of the site and accessed via a custom url

Virtual Folder

To configure the PhysicalFileSystem to work with a virtual folder there not much to do, change the value of the virtualRoot parameter to the virtual folder you want to use. By default it is configured to store media files in ~/media.

using Umbraco.Core.Composing;
using Umbraco.Core;
using Umbraco.Core.IO;

namespace Umbraco8Examples.Composition
{
    public class SetMediaFileSystemComposer : IUserComposer
    {
        public void Compose(Umbraco.Core.Composing.Composition composition)
        {
            composition.SetMediaFileSystem(() => new PhysicalFileSystem("~/custommediafolder"));
        }
    }
}

Physical path

If you want to store the media files in a separate folder, outside of the Umbraco website, maybe on a NAS/SAN you have to remove the virtualRoot property and add two new properties:

• rootPath is the full filesystem path where you want media files to be stored. It has to be rooted, must use directory separators (\) and must not end with a separator. For example, Z: or C:\path\to\folder or \\servername\path.
• rootUrl is the url where the files will be accessible from. It must use url separators (/) and must not end with a separator. It can either be a folder, like /UmbracoMedia, in which case it will considered as subfolder of the main domain (example.com/UmbracoMedia) or can be a fully qualified url, with also domain name and protocol (for ex http://media.example.com/media).

using Umbraco.Core.Composing;
using Umbraco.Core;
using Umbraco.Core.IO;

namespace Umbraco8Examples.Composition
{
    public class SetMediaFileSystemComposer : IUserComposer
    {
        public void Compose(Umbraco.Core.Composing.Composition composition)
        {
            composition.SetMediaFileSystem(() => new PhysicalFileSystem("Z:\Storage\UmbracoMedia","http://media.example.com/media" ));
        }
    }
}

Custom providers

To store media files in different systems, the type of provider must be changed. You can learn how to build a custom filesystem provider in the Extending Umbraco section.

Get the contents of a file as a stream

To get the content of a file as a stream, the best practice is to use the IMediaFileSystem interface to do so, rather than reading the file from the server using something like Server.MapPath. This will ensure that, regardless of the file system provider, the stream will be returned correctly. This is an example of how you can, on one hand - use IMediaFileSystem to check whether the file exist, and on the other hand return the file as a stream in a controller.

using System.IO;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Mvc;
using Umbraco.Web.Mvc;
using Umbraco.Core.IO;

public class MediaController : SurfaceController
{
    private readonly IMediaFileSystem _media;

    public MediaController(IMediaFileSystem media)
    {
        _media = media;
    }
    public ActionResult Index(string id, string file)
    {
        string path = "/media/" + id + "/" + file;
        if(_media.FileExists(path))
        {
            var stream = _media.OpenFile(path);
            stream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);

            return new FileStreamResult(stream, MimeMapping.GetMimeMapping(file));
        }
        else
        {
            return HttpNotFound();
        }

    }
}