Sitefinity export images and documents

sitefinity | 2025-12-20

🚩 Problem Statement

The client wants to export images and documents for achieval purpose.

We have the database in local to perform archive task.

We have gone through the Sitefinity KB

It is basically using the OOTB Sitefinity API to query the files and save in local storage.

💡 Solution

Use the sample package from Execute Code in WebForm.
Follow the step to include the files in Sitefinity project.
Use the code from Download all images in the aspx.cs file.
Run the Sitefinity instance and ensure you have the admin login to the Sitefinity backend dashboard
To avoid DB connection close, make sure you download them by chunk. In my case, I ensure the ordering by .OrderBy(x => x.LastModified) and then did a 500 chunk basis .skip(500).take(500).
Futhermore, you can do the same for uploaded documents, by using .GetDocuments() method.
If unsure the user have rights to access the file, wrap the code with SystemManager.RunWithElevatedPrivilege to elevate the query priviledge.
Also, please make sure the image / document url is correct. My case was routing to production url with http, it keeps throw error until I have to replace it with localhost.

🔗 My Sample Code

Reusing the sample package from Execute Code in WebForm.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Net;
using Telerik.Sitefinity.Abstractions;
using Telerik.Sitefinity.GenericContent.Model;
using Telerik.Sitefinity.Modules.Libraries;
using Telerik.Sitefinity.Services;


namespace SitefinityWebApp
{
    public partial class WebForm1 : System.Web.UI.Page
    {
        private string UpdateUrl(string url)
        {
            if (url.StartsWith("https://www.xxx.com/"))
            {
                return url.Replace("https://www.xxx.com/", "http://localhost/");
            }

            if (url.StartsWith("http://www.xxx.com/"))
            {
                return url.Replace("http://www.xxx.com/", "http://localhost/");
            }

            return url;
        }

        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            var skipValue = 0; // incremental manually
            var take = 500;
            var errorList = new List<string>();
            var rootFolder = @"c:\ImagesFolder\";

            SystemManager.RunWithElevatedPrivilege(p =>
            {
                LibrariesManager librariesManager = LibrariesManager.GetManager();
                // Use GetDocuments() for documents
                var allImages = librariesManager.GetImages().Where(i => i.Status == ContentLifecycleStatus.Master).OrderBy(x => x.LastModified);
                // var totalImages = allImages.Count();
                var takeImages = allImages.Skip(skipValue).Take(500);
                foreach (var image in takeImages)
                {
                    var imageUrl = image.Url;
                    try
                    {
                        if (imageUrl != null)
                        {
                            var imgTitle = image.Title;
                            var imgExt = image.Extension;
                            var localFilename = rootFolder + imgTitle + imgExt;

                            int counter = 1;
                            while (File.Exists(localFilename))
                            {
                                localFilename = Path.Combine(
                                    rootFolder,
                                    $"{imgTitle}({counter}){imgExt}"
                                );
                                counter++;
                            }

                            using (WebClient client = new WebClient())
                            {
                                imageUrl = UpdateUrl(imageUrl);
                                var uri = new Uri(imageUrl);
                                client.DownloadFile(uri, localFilename);
                            }
                        }
                    }
                    catch (Exception ex)
                    {
                        errorList.Add(UpdateUrl(imageUrl));
                        Log.Write("Download Error => " + ex.Message + " " + imageUrl);
                    }
                }
            });

            if (errorList.Count > 0)
            {
                Log.Write(string.Join("\r\n", errorList).ToString());
            }
        }
    }
}