title: Send and receive large file over streams in ASP.NET Web Api C#
body: <p>I'm working on a project where I need to send large audio files via streams from a client to a server. I'm using the ASP.NET Web Api to communicate between client and server. My client has a "SendFile" method which I believe works fine, but I don't know how to make my server receive the data I'm sending via a stream. My client code looks like this so far:</p>
  
  <pre><code> private const int MAX_CHUNK_SIZE = (1024 * 5000);
      private HttpWebRequest webRequest = null;
      private FileStream fileReader = null;
      private Stream requestStream = null;
  
      public bool SendAudio(string uri, string file)
      {
          byte[] fileData;
          fileReader = new FileStream(file, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
          webRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(uri);
          webRequest.Method = "POST";
          webRequest.ContentLength = fileReader.Length;
          webRequest.Timeout = 600000;
          webRequest.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
          webRequest.AllowWriteStreamBuffering = false;
          requestStream = webRequest.GetRequestStream();
  
          long fileSize = fileReader.Length;
          long remainingBytes = fileSize;
          int numberOfBytesRead = 0, done = 0;
  
          while (numberOfBytesRead &lt; fileSize)
          {
              SetByteArray(out fileData, remainingBytes);
              done = WriteFileToStream(fileData, requestStream);
              numberOfBytesRead += done;
              remainingBytes -= done;
          }
          fileReader.Close();
          return true;
      }
  
      public int WriteFileToStream(byte[] fileData, Stream requestStream)
      {
          int done = fileReader.Read(fileData, 0, fileData.Length);
          requestStream.Write(fileData, 0, fileData.Length);
  
          return done;
      }
  
      private void SetByteArray(out byte[] fileData, long bytesLeft)
      {
          fileData = bytesLeft &lt; MAX_CHUNK_SIZE ? new byte[bytesLeft] : new byte[MAX_CHUNK_SIZE];
      }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>My server looks like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>    [HttpPost]
      [ActionName("AddAudio")]
      public async Task&lt;IHttpActionResult&gt; AddAudio([FromUri]string name)
      {
          try
          {
              isReceivingFile = true;
              byte[] receivedBytes = await Request.Content.ReadAsByteArrayAsync();
              if (WriteAudio(receivedBytes, name) == true)
              {
                  isReceivingFile = false;
                  return Ok();
              }
              else
              {
                  isReceivingFile = false;
                  return BadRequest("ERROR: Audio could not be saved on server.");
              }
          }
          catch (Exception ex)
          {
              isReceivingFile = false;
              return BadRequest("ERROR: Audio could not be saved on server.");
          }
      }
  
      public bool WriteAudio(byte[] receivedBytes, string fileName)
      {
          string file = Path.Combine(@"C:\Users\username\Desktop\UploadedFiles", fileName);
          using (FileStream fs = File.Create(file))
          {
              fs.Write(receivedBytes, 0, receivedBytes.Length);
          }
          return true;
      }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The server code has the original code I wrote for it, before deciding to try and make it work with streams. The server code still works if I send a small file (under 30 MB), but if I send a large file my server gets a "outofmemoryexception". I can't figure out how to make the server take in the data via a stream. In my search for solutions I've come across a lot of examples with sockets and TCPClient, but that's not how we want to do it on this project. Can anybody help, please?</p>