set src property in view to a url outside of the MVC3 project

Question

I am trying to create an application that will display images that are stored locally on the webserver. Here is what I have in my view, note that \"entry\" are absolute addresse

Answer 1

You cannot directly serve images outside of your ASP.NET MVC 3 application to the client. That would be a huge security vulnerability if the client could access arbitrary files on your server.

You will need to write a controller action that will return them and then point your src property of your tags to this controller action.

public class ImagesController: Controller
{
    public ActionResult SomeImage()
    {
        return File(@"C:\Images\foo.jpg", "image/jpeg");
    }
}

and inside your view:

You could also pass the image name as parameter to the controller action:

public class ImagesController: Controller
{
    public ActionResult SomeImage(string imageName)
    {
        var root = @"C:\Images\";
        var path = Path.Combine(root, imageName);
        path = Path.GetFullPath(path);
        if (!path.StartsWith(root))
        {
            // Ensure that we are serving file only inside the root folder
            // and block requests outside like "../web.config"
            throw new HttpException(403, "Forbidden");
        }

        return File(path, "image/jpeg");
    }
}

and in your view: