Media Items all return 404

Question

On sitecore 8.2 inital version.

I am doing the following:

var myImageItem = (MediaItem) Sitecore.Context.Item.Fields["MyImageField"].Item;
if (myImageItem != null)
{
    viewModel.ImageAlt = myImageItem.Alt;
    var url = MediaManager.GetMediaUrl(myImageItem);
    if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(url))
    {
        viewModel.ImageUrl = url;
    }
}

The url however is always returning a 404 item not found. The logs show the following:

14008 13:40:38 WARN  Request is redirected to document not found page. Requested url: /media/94EF96BAA8214F6D9262C9FCB2137F2C.ashx, User: sitecore\admin, Website: MyWebsite

15432 13:40:58 WARN  Request is redirected to document not found page. Requested url: /media/94EF96BAA8214F6D9262C9FCB2137F2C.ashx, User: sitecore\admin, Website: MyWebsite

I have turned off mediarequest extension default of .ashx by following instructions on: https://community.sitecore.net/technical_blogs/b/sitecorejohn_blog/posts/sitecore-idiosyncrasies-media-urls

Even with this turned off .ashx media urls still being returned.

Answer 1

Your problem lays in casting to MediaItem object, you should use ImageField instead.

Use this:

Sitecore.Data.Fields.ImageField myImageItem = (Sitecore.Data.Fields.ImageField)Sitecore.Context.Item.Fields["MyImageField"];

then:

Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaManager.GetMediaUrl(myImageItem.MediaItem);

Answer 2

Looking at the error message your media item URLs are being generated as /media. The default settings in Sitecore 8.2 are to generate with /-/media. Browse to /sitecore/admin/showconfig.aspx and check the value of Media.MediaLinkPrefix. By default it should be empty.

If the media prefix has intentionally been changed the you also need to update the following settings to add your new prefix as the trigger:

<sitecore>    
  <settings>
    <setting name="Media.MediaLinkPrefix" set:value="media" />
  </settings>

  <!-- Media handler prefixes -->
  <customHandlers>
    <handler patch:before="*[@trigger='-/media/']" trigger="media/" handler="sitecore_media.ashx" />
  </customHandlers>

  <mediaLibrary>
    <mediaPrefixes>
      <prefix value="-/media"/>
    </mediaPrefixes>
  </mediaLibrary>
</sitecore>

Note that the trigger prefix should be unique. This is why Sitecore uses the -/ part of the default prefix. If you have content which matches the prefix trigger then it will match as a media item instead, e.g. /products/media/item/ try to match as a media item. Either ensure the trigger is unique or disallow users creating items with that name.