Uploading large files to an ASP.NET app....

I wanted to let users upload potentially large xml files to my latest web app.

This can be achieved using the simple FileUpload control in ASP.

However, this basic control is very ugly and doesn't give much feedback.

Also, it doesn't seem to offer any zip compression support.

So I had a look around.

• Steve Sanderson had demoed a cute jquery sample at DDD7 - http://blog.codeville.net/category/jquery/ - this looked quite neat - but it's still quite fiddly - there's swf's, js's and httphandlers to write and install.
• Then there were commercial controls (mainly using ActiveX components) - e.g. http://fileup.softartisans.com/fileup-132.aspx - but this costs $199 and higher?!
• And that was pretty much all I found :(

I think ultimately I'll follow Steve's approach... but in the meantime I've just decided to do the zip file parsing myself - using the excellent http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SharpZipLib/Default.aspx - which is already included in DNN.

The downside of this is that in the short term:

• I'm forcing the users to continue to suffer from the lack of UI feedback during large uploads...
• I'm forcing the users to zip files themselves.

Sorry for now, users!