Saving file to client side computer

[wild_bill]

I have an entry form. One of the options is saving an incomplete form, that can be loaded at a later date, and submitted. I would rather have the files saved on the client side, so that one client can not open another's file. All help is appreciated.

[alex_read]

Well you could take a look at the Response.OutputStream method to return a file & let your users download this.

I recommend you look into a solution whereby you save this onto your server and provide a means of relating a user to a specific saved form (or series of forms) though - maybe via a user login for example.

If you are thinking of letting your users upload the file again at a later date, this would raise more security and validation issues you would need to account for.

[sooo_tired]

If you only want to store the incomplete form data, then you can store it in cookie and retrive it later to populate the form. That would be easy.

[alex_read]

Bear in mind that you should allow for the fact that not all browsers are set to allow cookies.

I believe there is a method within ASP.Net which allows you to save session state to a database instead, but again, this will require a server-side solution.

[wild_bill]

I thought about using a cookie, but what happens when a client deletes their cookies? If it smokes all of the temporary data they've stored, I would have people lined up outside my cubicle with pitch forks, and torches. For now I've got it set up to store the data on the server. I figure one of the key advantages, is our nightly backups will ensure a hardware problem on the client side will not require them to spend hours redoing data entry.