File system providers

Xperience by Kentico uses file system providers to abstract the underlying file system of the hosting machine. Different providers allow you to access specific parts of the application's file system and redirect file storage to external locations (such as Azure Blob Storage or Amazon S3) without changing application code. All file I/O goes through the CMS.IO abstraction layer – see Files API and CMS.IO for details.

To connect providers to the correct paths, Xperience uses storage path mapping – a registry-based system that routes each application path to the appropriate provider based on your hosting environment.

The system supports the following providers:

• File system storage – the default provider for local disk storage. Used automatically when no external mapping is configured.
• Azure Blob storage – maps file system paths to Microsoft Azure Blob Storage. Used for SaaS and private cloud deployments on Azure.
• Amazon S3 – maps file system paths to Amazon S3 storage.
• Custom file system providers – implement your own provider for any storage backend.