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up vote 0 down vote favorite

Any help is most welcomed and really appreciated.

I have an MVC action which retries a file content from a web service. This action is invoked from a Angular service (located in services.js) using $http.post(action, model), and the action is returning a FileContentResult object, which contains the byte array and the content type.

public ActionResult DownloadResults(DownloadResultsModel downloadResultsModel)
{
downloadResult = ... // Retrieving the file from a web service
Response.ClearHeaders();
Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", string.Format("attachment; filename={0}", downloadResult.FileName));
Response.BufferOutput = false;
return new FileContentResult(downloadResult.Contents, downloadResult.ContentType);
}

The issue I'm having is about the browser not performing the default behavior of handing a file (for example, prompting to open it, saving it or cancel). The action is completed successfully with having the content of the file and the file name (injected to the FileContentResult object), but there s no response from the browser.

When I'm replacing the post with $window.location.href, and construct the URI myself, I'm hitting the action and after it completes the browser is handling the file as expected.

Does anyone can think of any idea how to complete the 'post' as expected?

Thanks,

Elad

share|improve this question
    
The action is completed with no response from the browser. file is downloaded or nothing is happening?? – entre Nov 3 '14 at 6:10
    
@harish, thank you for your comment. I updated the post. File is retrieved from the web service, but when I'm returning the content of the file in a FileContentResult there is not file handling behavior performed by the browser. – Elad Gutman Nov 3 '14 at 6:28
up vote 1 down vote

I am using below code to download the file, given that the file does exist on the server and client is sending server the full path of the file...

as per you requirement change the code to specify path on server itself.

    [HttpGet]
    public HttpResponseMessage DownloadFile(string filename)
    {
        filename = filename.Replace("\\\\", "\\").Replace("'", "").Replace("\"", "");
        if (!char.IsLetter(filename[0]))
        {
            filename = filename.Substring(2);
        }

        var fileinfo = new FileInfo(filename);
        if (!fileinfo.Exists)
        {
            throw new FileNotFoundException(fileinfo.Name);
        }

        try
        {
            var excelData = File.ReadAllBytes(filename);
            var result = new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.OK);
            var stream = new MemoryStream(excelData);
            result.Content = new StreamContent(stream);
            result.Content.Headers.ContentType = new MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/octet-stream");
            result.Content.Headers.ContentDisposition = new ContentDispositionHeaderValue("attachment")
            {
                FileName = fileinfo.Name
            };
            return result;
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            return Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.ExpectationFailed, ex);
        }
    }

and then on client side in angular:

    var downloadFile = function (filename) {
        var ifr = document.createElement('iframe');
        ifr.style.display = 'none';
        document.body.appendChild(ifr);
        ifr.src = document.location.pathname + "api/GridApi/DownloadFile?filename='" + escape(filename) + "'";
        ifr.onload = function () {
            document.body.removeChild(ifr);
            ifr = null;
        };
    };
share|improve this answer
    
for some reason couldn't make this one work for me. Still trying. – Elad Gutman Nov 5 '14 at 4:04
    
what is the issue that you are facing – entre Nov 5 '14 at 4:31

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