Personally I'd go for something that balances speed, reliability and economical code, so I'd base it on a TCP network stream. The client-side of the code would look like this:
internal class Client
{
private FileStream _fs;
private long _expectedLength;
public void GetFileFromServer(string localFilename)
{
if (File.Exists(localFilename))
File.Delete(localFilename);
_fs = new FileStream(localFilename, FileMode.Append);
var ipEndpointServer = new IPEndPoint(IPAddress.Parse({serverIp}), {serverPort});
// an object that wraps tcp client
var client = new TcpClientWrapper(ipEndpointServer, "");
client.DataReceived += DataReceived;
}
private void DataReceived(object sender, DataReceivedEventArgs e)
{
var data = e.Data;
// first packet starts with 4 bytes dedicated to the length of the file
if (_expectedLength == 0)
{
var headerBytes = new byte[4];
Array.Copy(e.Data, 0, headerBytes, 0, 4);
_expectedLength = BitConverter.ToInt32(headerBytes, 0);
data = new byte[e.Data.Length - 4];
Array.Copy(e.Data, 4, data, 0, data.Length);
}
_fs.WriteAsync(e.Data, 0, e.Data.Length);
if (_fs.Length >= _expectedLength)
{
// transfer has finished
}
}
}
Then have a server class to serve the file. Note how the whole file isn't loaded into memory, instead it is read in chunks from a FileStream.
internal class Server
{
private TcpServer _tcpServer;
private NetworkStream _stream;
public void StartServer()
{
// fire up a simple Tcp server
_tcpServer = new TcpServer({serverPort}, "test");
_tcpServer.ClientConnected += ClientConnected;
}
private void ClientConnected(object sender, TcpClientConnectedEventArgs e)
{
// an incoming client has been detected ... send the file to that client!
_stream = e.Client.GetStream();
SendFileToClient({pathToFile});
}
private void SendFileToClient(string pathToFile)
{
// open the file as a stream and send in chunks
using (var fs = new FileStream(pathToFile, FileMode.Open))
{
// send header which is file length
var headerBytes = new byte[4];
Buffer.BlockCopy(BitConverter.GetBytes(fs.Length + 4), 0, headerBytes, 0, 4);
_stream.Write(headerBytes, 0, 4);
// send file in block sizes of your choosing
var buffer = new byte[100000];
int bytesRead = 0;
while ((bytesRead = fs.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)
{
_stream.Write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
}
_stream.Flush();
}
}
}
The TcpClientWrapper is pretty much boiler plate code with the System.Net.Sockets.TcpClient object and the underlying NetworkStream object. I don't really need to post this as well, but just to give some pointers ther construction would contain something like this:
_tcp = new Net.TcpClient();
_tcp.Connect(remoteEp);
_stream = _tcp.GetStream();
_stream.BeginRead(_receivedData, 0, _receivedData.Length, DataReceivedAsync, null);
and the DataReceivedAsync method is boilerplate socket data handling and would raise an event o share the received data back to the consumer (the client in this case):
private void DataReceivedAsync(IAsyncResult ar)
{
var receivedBytes = _stream.EndRead(ar);
if (receivedBytes > 0)
{
var data = new byte[receivedBytes];
Array.Copy(_receivedData, 0, data, 0, receivedBytes);
DataReceived?.Invoke(this, new DataReceivedEventArgs(data));
_receivedData = new byte[ReceiveBufferSize];
_stream.BeginRead(_receivedData, 0, _receivedData.Length, DataReceivedAsync, null);
}
}
The event to ship data from the wrapper back to the client:
public EventHandler<DataReceivedEventArgs> DataReceived;
public class DataReceivedEventArgs : EventArgs
{
public DataReceivedEventArgs(byte[] data) { Data = data; }
public byte[] Data { get; }
}
