title: Asp.Net advanced file uploading
body: <p>When using a standard <code>&lt;input type="file" /&gt;</code> on an mvc3 site, you can receive the file in your action method by creating an input parameter of type <code>HttpPostedFile</code>  and setting the form to <code>enctype="multipart/form-data"</code></p>
  
  <p>One of the problems of this approach is that the request does not complete and is not handed off to your action method until the entire contents of the file have been uploaded.</p>
  
  <p>I would like to do some things to that file as it is being uploaded to the server.  Basically i want to asynchronously receive the data as it comes in and then programmatically handle the data byte by byte.</p>
  
  <p>To accomplish the above I imagine you will need to handle this part of the request in an HttpModule or custom HttpHandler perhaps.  I am familiar with how those things work, but I am not familiar with the method of receiving the file upload data asynchronously as it comes in.</p>
  
  <p>I know this is possible because I have worked with 3rd party components in the past that do this (normally so they can report upload progress, or cache the data to disk to avoid iis/asp.net memory limitations).  Unfortunately all the components I have used are closed source so I can't peek inside and see what they are doing.</p>
  
  <p>I am not looking for code, but can someone get me pointed in the right direction here?</p>