Member Avatar for WyrdOne

I have an ASP.Net site that includes a folder named "files" as a subdirectory of the site. I have a help page set up with links that are set to "~/files/help1.doc", "~/files/help2.doc", etc... These all work great.

I have another section of the site where the user clicks a button and I try to read one of the Word docs into a filestream, convert it to Bytes, and save it to a database.

The line to read the file into the filestream is:
Dim fs As New FileStream(Server.MapPath("~/files/help1.doc"), FileMode.Open)

And it errors out there every time saying access to that path is denied. I can click the links all day long and read the Word docs, but when I try to read it using the line above it can't.

Why can I access the documents through a straight link, but I can't read that same document from that same location using a File Stream?

Is there some other method I can use to read the file into a file stream or memory stream?

It seems like if it were a permissions issue I wouldn't be able to access the Docs through any means. The fact that I do have permission to pop the Doc open in my browser window seems to suggest I have enough permission to the "files" folder to read things out of it.

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Member Avatar for ninjaimp

It may be a permissions issue - filemode.open does open (or try to open) the file with read/write access.

Maybe worth contacting your provider to find out.

have a look here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/b9skfh7s.aspx

Edited by ninjaimp because: n/a
commented: Concise and helpful +0
Member Avatar for WyrdOne

It may be a permissions issue - filemode.open does open (or try to open) the file with read/write access.

Maybe worth contacting your provider to find out.

have a look here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/b9skfh7s.aspx

It was the read/write access causing the issue.

I added the 3rd parameter to the creation of the new FileStream to set access = FileAccess.Read and that did the trick. Now that it's just trying to open the file for read access it works like a charm.

Thank you for your suggestion.

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