Documents

Managing Document Assets

Document assets can be any non-media file that you might want to make available for download on your site e.g. pdfs, word docs or zip files.

The admin panel has a whole section devoted to managing documents where users can add, update and delete document assets from a central place.

Document File Location

By default Cofoundry will save document files into the "App_Data" folder inside your project. See the File Storage docs for more information on configuring file storage options.

Generating Document URLs

From a View or Template

The Cofoundry View Helper is the best way to access this:

@using Cofoundry.Web

@model MyContentDisplayModel
@inject ICofoundryHelper<MyContentDisplayModel> Cofoundry

/* From a model */
<img src="@Cofoundry.Routing.DocumentAsset(Model.MyDocumentAsset)">

/* From an id (see warning below) */
<img src="@await Cofoundry.Routing.DocumentAssetAsync(3)">

Warning: Generating a URL from just a document asset id involves getting more information about the document from the database. It is recommended that you try to include the full DocumentAssetRenderDetails object in your view model to take advantage of batch requests and async methods.

From Code

You can request IDocumentAssetRouteLibrary from the DI container and use this to generate URLs. It is the same API used by the Cofoundry View Helper above.

public class DocumentExample
{
    private readonly IDocumentAssetRouteLibrary _documentAssetRouteLibrary;

    public DocumentExample(IDocumentAssetRouteLibrary documentAssetRouteLibrary)
    {
        _documentAssetRouteLibrary = documentAssetRouteLibrary;
    }

    public string GetExampleUrl(IDocumentAssetRenderable document)
    {
        var url = _documentAssetRouteLibrary.DocumentAsset(document);

        return url;
    }
}

Getting Document Data

The simplest way to get document data is by resolving an instance of IContentRepositry from the DI container.

public class DocumentExample
{
    private readonly IDocumentAssetRouteLibrary _documentAssetRouteLibrary;
    private readonly IContentRepository _contentRepository;

    public DocumentExample(
        IDocumentAssetRouteLibrary documentAssetRouteLibrary,
        IContentRepository contentRepository
        )
    {
        _documentAssetRouteLibrary = documentAssetRouteLibrary;
        _contentRepository = contentRepository;
    }

    public async Task<string> GetExampleUrl(int documentId)
    {
        var document = await _contentRepository
            .DocumentAssets()
            .GetById(documentId)
            .AsRenderDetails()
            .ExecuteAsync();

        var url = _documentAssetRouteLibrary.DocumentAsset(document);

        return url;
    }
}

Restricting File Types

By default Cofoundry validates uploaded files against a blocklist of potentially dangerous file extensions and mime types taken from DangerousFileConstants.cs.

This is not intended to be a bulletproof validation mechanism, but it does at least prevent a non-technical user accidentally uploading an executable or script file.

Files with unknown MIME types

The application/octet-stream MIME type is blocked by default, this is the fall-back MIME type if one cannot be resolved from the file extension.

If you're finding that a file type is blocked, it may be because the MIME mapping is missing from the from underlying FileExtensionContentTypeProvider. In Cofoundry you can configure additional MIME mappings by creating a class that implements IMimeTypeRegistration, which will automatically be picked up and bootstrapped via the DI system:

public class MyAdditionalMimeTypeRegistration : IMimeTypeRegistration
{
    public void Register(IMimeTypeRegistrationContext context)
    {
        context.AddOrUpdate(".epub", "application/epub+zip");
        context.AddOrUpdate(".csv", "text/csv");
    }
}

Disabling file type restrictions

File type restrictions can be disabled using configuration settings. Note that these settings apply to both image and document asset files:

{
  "Cofoundry:AssetFiles": {
    "FileExtensionValidation": "Disabled",
    "MimeTypeValidation": "Disabled"
  }
}

Customizing file type restrictions

You can use AssetFilesSettings to fully configure the validation process. For either file extension or mime type validation you can choose to use either a blocklist or an allowlist, or disable validation completely.

This example shows a restrictive allowlist of file types:

{
  "Cofoundry:AssetFiles": {
    "FileExtensionValidation": "UseAllowList",
    "MimeTypeValidation": "UseAllowList",
    "FileExtensionValidationList": [
      "png",
      "jpg",
      "jpeg",
      "gif",
      "pdf",
      "doc",
      "docx"
    ],
    "MimeTypeValidationList": [
      "image/png",
      "image/jpeg",
      "image/gif",
      "application/pdf",
      "application/msword",
      "application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document"
    ]
  }
}

IANA keeps a full list of MIME types here