Access uploaded document properties?

[Guest]

Hello! I'm trying to find out if it's possible to access the properties of
an document uploaded via the fileupload control? The end goal is to
dynamically insert the number of pages in a document into a database field
when the file is uploaded, along with the filename and mime property.

TIA!

 

[Rad [Visual C# MVP]]

Depends ... what sort of document are you talking about? Word? PDF?
Publisher?

 

[Guest]

The upload limits files to word, excel, ppt and pdf (for the most part)
--
Morgan
Web Developer
Portland, Oregon

 

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hello Morgan,

For those documents like word, excel, pdf, they're of binary format,
based on my research, it will require us launch the document's processing
application interface to get those properties(like calling Office COM
object through automation). However, it will be a bit expensive and not
recommended to do this in an server-side application like ASP.NET web
application.

BTW, do you think it possible that we use a rich client interface to let
the user upload such document? For example, use an ActiveX control to let
user upload such document, thus we can gain more control over the document
at client-side through some strong code(e.g automation through COM
interface). How do you think ?

Please feel free to post here if you have any other ideas or consideration.

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead



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[Rad [Visual C# MVP]]

I agree. I tried something like this a while back and run into a
myriad of issues, ranging from mysterious messageboxes appearing on
the server and several dozen instances of winword.exe running that
failed to close!

Perhaps with the new Office 2007 you might be able to do this more
efficiently, but then again it will be a while before the new format
gains adoption.

In the meantime, does your scenario involve some level of trust in the
user? If so it may be an idea to avail a text box as well and ask them
to key in the number of pages which you can then use as an estimate.