c# - How to Upload File from Angular to ASP.NET Core Web API

Question

Similar questions have been asked but after looking through all of those and many blog posts on the subject I have not been able to figure this out so please forgive me.

I am creating a simple blog with (for the purposes of this question) two parts, a front end SPA in Angular 8 and a back-end API in ASP.NET Core 3. In one part of my front end I am attempting to upload an image to be used as the image for a newly created blog. When I try to upload an image, the resulting IFormFile in the backend is always coming out to null. Below is the code, any help is greatly appreciated!

new-blog.component.html:

<form [formGroup]="newBlogForm" (ngSubmit)="onSubmit(newBlogForm.value)">

    <div>
        <label for="Name">
            Blog Name
        </label>
        <input type="text" formControlName="Name">
    </div>

    <div>
        <label for="TileImage">
            Tile Image
        </label>
        <input type="file" formControlName="TileImage">
    </div>

    <button type="submit">Create Blog</button>

</form>

new-blog.component.ts:

import { Component, OnInit } from '@angular/core';
import { FormBuilder, FormGroup, FormControl } from '@angular/forms';
import { BlogService } from '../blog-services/blog.service';

@Component({
  selector: 'app-new-blog',
  templateUrl: './new-blog.component.html',
  styleUrls: ['./new-blog.component.css']
})
export class NewBlogComponent implements OnInit {
  private newBlogForm: FormGroup;

  constructor(private formBuilder: FormBuilder, private blogService: BlogService) { }

  ngOnInit() {
    this.newBlogForm = this.formBuilder.group({
      Name: new FormControl(null),
      TileImage: new FormControl(null)
    });
  }

  onSubmit(blogData: FormData) {
    console.log('new blog has been submitted.', blogData);
    this.blogService.postBlog(blogData);
    this.newBlogForm.reset();
  }

}

postBlog from blog.service.ts:

  postBlog(blogData: FormData): Observable<any> {
    const postBlogSubject = new Subject();
    this.appOptions.subscribe(
      (options) => {
        const url = options.blogAPIUrl + '/Blogs';
        this.http
          .post(url, blogData)
          .subscribe(
            (blog) => {
              postBlogSubject.next(blog);
            }
          );
      }
    );
    return postBlogSubject.asObservable();
  }

The signature for my BlogController looks like this:

[HttpPost]
public async Task<ActionResult<Blog>> PostBlog([FromForm]PostBlogModel blogModel)

with the PostBlogModel as follows:

    public class PostBlogModel
    {
        public string Name { get; set; }
        public IFormFile TileImage { get; set; }
    }

I have implemented logging middleware to try to debug. The output is as follows (I see that for some reason the front-end is sending application/json rather than multipart/form-data but I'm not sure why or how to fix...)

blogapi_1  | info: Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting.Diagnostics[2]
blogapi_1  |       Request finished in 170.16740000000001ms 500
blogapi_1  | info: Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting.Diagnostics[1]
blogapi_1  |       Request starting HTTP/1.1 OPTIONS http://localhost:5432/api/v1/Blogs
blogapi_1  | dbug: BlogAPI.Middleware.RequestResponseLoggingMiddleware[0]
blogapi_1  |       HTTP Request: Headers:
blogapi_1  |            key: Connection, values: keep-alive
blogapi_1  |            key: Accept, values: */*
blogapi_1  |            key: Accept-Encoding, values: gzip, deflate, br
blogapi_1  |            key: Accept-Language, values: en-US,en-IN;q=0.9,en;q=0.8,en-GB;q=0.7
blogapi_1  |            key: Host, values: localhost:5432
blogapi_1  |            key: Referer, values: http://localhost:5431/blog/new-blog
blogapi_1  |            key: User-Agent, values: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/78.0.3904.108 Safari/537.36
blogapi_1  |            key: Origin, values: http://localhost:5431
blogapi_1  |            key: Access-Control-Request-Method, values: POST
blogapi_1  |            key: Access-Control-Request-Headers, values: content-type
blogapi_1  |            key: Sec-Fetch-Site, values: same-site
blogapi_1  |            key: Sec-Fetch-Mode, values: cors
blogapi_1  |
blogapi_1  |        type:
blogapi_1  |        scheme: http
blogapi_1  |        host+path: localhost:5432/api/v1/Blogs
blogapi_1  |        queryString:
blogapi_1  |        body: 
blogapi_1  | info: Microsoft.AspNetCore.Cors.Infrastructure.CorsService[4]
blogapi_1  |       CORS policy execution successful.
blogapi_1  | dbug: BlogAPI.Middleware.RequestResponseLoggingMiddleware[0]
blogapi_1  |       HTTP Response: Headers:
blogapi_1  |            key: Access-Control-Allow-Headers, values: Content-Type
blogapi_1  |            key: Access-Control-Allow-Origin, values: http://localhost:5431
blogapi_1  |
blogapi_1  |        statusCode: 204
blogapi_1  |        responseBody: 
blogapi_1  | info: Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting.Diagnostics[2]
blogapi_1  |       Request finished in 58.5088ms 204
blogapi_1  | info: Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting.Diagnostics[1]
blogapi_1  |       Request starting HTTP/1.1 POST http://localhost:5432/api/v1/Blogs application/json 56
blogapi_1  | dbug: BlogAPI.Middleware.RequestResponseLoggingMiddleware[0]
blogapi_1  |       HTTP Request: Headers:
blogapi_1  |            key: Connection, values: keep-alive
blogapi_1  |            key: Content-Type, values: application/json
blogapi_1  |            key: Accept, values: application/json, text/plain, */*
blogapi_1  |            key: Accept-Encoding, values: gzip, deflate, br
blogapi_1  |            key: Accept-Language, values: en-US,en-IN;q=0.9,en;q=0.8,en-GB;q=0.7
blogapi_1  |            key: Host, values: localhost:5432
blogapi_1  |            key: Referer, values: http://localhost:5431/blog/new-blog
blogapi_1  |            key: User-Agent, values: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/78.0.3904.108 Safari/537.36
blogapi_1  |            key: Origin, values: http://localhost:5431
blogapi_1  |            key: Content-Length, values: 56
blogapi_1  |            key: Sec-Fetch-Site, values: same-site
blogapi_1  |            key: Sec-Fetch-Mode, values: cors
blogapi_1  |       
blogapi_1  |        type: application/json
blogapi_1  |        scheme: http
blogapi_1  |        host+path: localhost:5432/api/v1/Blogs
blogapi_1  |        queryString:
blogapi_1  |        body: {"Name":"test","TileImage":"C:\fakepath\DSC_0327.jpg"}

Answer 1

my BlogController looks like this:

[HttpPost]

public async Task<ActionResult<Blog>> PostBlog([FromForm]PostBlogModel blogModel)

It seems that you'd like to pass data using form-data, to achieve it, you can refer to the following code sample.

.component.html

<form [formGroup]="newBlogForm" (ngSubmit)="onSubmit(newBlogForm.value)">

  <div>
      <label for="Name">
          Blog Name
      </label>
      <input type="text" formControlName="Name">
  </div>

  <div>
      <label for="TileImage">
          Tile Image
      </label>
      <input type="file" formControlName="TileImage" (change)="onSelectFile($event)" >
  </div>

  <button type="submit">Create Blog</button>

</form>

.component.ts

selectedFile: File = null;
private newBlogForm: FormGroup;
constructor(private http: HttpClient) { }

ngOnInit() {
  this.newBlogForm = new FormGroup({
    Name: new FormControl(null),
    TileImage: new FormControl(null)
  });
}

onSelectFile(fileInput: any) {
  this.selectedFile = <File>fileInput.target.files[0];
}

onSubmit(data) {
  
  const formData = new FormData();
  formData.append('Name', data.Name);
  formData.append('TileImage', this.selectedFile);

  this.http.post('your_url_here', formData)
  .subscribe(res => {

    alert('Uploaded!!');
  });

  this.newBlogForm.reset();
}

Test Result