BinaryObjectManager

User profile pictures are stored in database, instead of file system. But it's not stored in Users table for performance reasons (Users are frequently retrieved from database, but profile pictures are rarely needed).

A general-purpose binary saving mechanism built in ASP.NET Zero. BinaryObject entity can be used to save any type of binary objects (byte arrays). Since a profile picture can be converted to a byte array, user profile pictures are saved here.

IBinaryObjectManager interface defines methods to save, get and delete binary objects. DbBinaryObjectManager implements it to save binary object in database. For example, ProfileController uses IBinaryObjectManager to get current user's profile picture from database.

You can create a different implementation of IBinaryObjectManager interface to store files in another destination.