setting content disposition

[davebat]

I have set up a page with a link to a file to download, that will prompt user to open, save or cancel rather than open the xls in browser like this:

Dim VirtualPath As String = Request.ServerVariables("SERVER_NAME").ToString
Dim file As String = Request.QueryString("href")
Dim filepath As String = "http://" & VirtualPath & file
Dim filename As String = System.IO.Path.GetFileName(filepath)
Response.ContentType = "application/x-msdownload"
 
lblHref.Text = ("<a href=" & filename & ">download</a>")

is there a way to open the save as box straight away without clicking save?

[mendhak]

No, that is not possible since it's a browser-specific feature. The user is always prompted with the Run/SaveAs/Cancel dialog box.

[penagate]

Response.ContentType = "application/x-msdownload"

This is wrong, it should be application/octet-stream.

Although, really, if you want to force a download you should serve the .xls file from a different aspx file and set the Content-disposition header to attachment, as you suggested in the thread title. This cannot be set through a link.

After that point, as mend said, it's up to the user agent to decide what to do.

[davebat]

Thanks guys, Ive changed it to

Dim VirtualPath As String = Request.ServerVariables("SERVER_NAME").ToString
        Dim file As String = Request.QueryString("href")
        Dim filepath As String = "http://" & VirtualPath & file
        Dim filename As String = System.IO.Path.GetFileName(filepath)
 
        Response.ContentType = "application/octet-stream"
 
        Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=""" & filename & """")
 
        Response.Flush()
    
        Response.Redirect("original url")

Only problem is after the file download prompt I would like it to redirect back to the page it came from, but nothing after the response.addheader gets processed. Do you know how I would do this.

[penagate]

You can't redirect after Flush(), the headers must be sent beforehand. That's why it has to be a separate script. If you link to that from the actual page, the browser should just show the download box without navigating away from the page.

[davebat]

thanks, the only problem is this file has to be available for certain users through the asp.net roles, and there are other files on the page available to everyone. Now that I understand http headers a little better I'll be able to figure out a solution.

Thanks.

[davebat]

I think im nearly there, the only thing is the file that is downloading has the right name, but is the actual aspx. net html rather than the spreadsheet>

Dim VirtualPath As String = Request.ServerVariables("SERVER_NAME").ToString
        Dim file As String = Request.QueryString("href")
        Dim filepath As String = "http://" & VirtualPath & file
        Dim filename As String = System.IO.Path.GetFileName(filepath)
        Dim fullpath As String = filepath & filename
 
        Response.Clear()
 
        If User.IsInRole("PRN222") Then
            Response.ContentType = "application/octet-stream"
            Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=" & filename)
            Response.Flush()
                  Else
            lblHref.Text = ("You do not have access to this report.")
        End If

[penagate]

That's because you have't made it a separate script and loaded the spreadsheet file into the response stream. So all it is doing is flushing the current page.

Like I said, you need two .aspx files:

• One to serve the HTML
• One to serve the file download

Link to the download page from the HTML page. Do the headers/response magic in the download page.

[davebat]

Thanks penagate, at the moment I have a aspx page with a list of links, when the link for this spreadsheet is pressed it goes to a download aspx page which has the above code. The download page is where I am trying to do the headers and response code.

[davebat]

I modified the code to add response.writefile and it works fine now

Thanks for your help

[davebat]

is there a way to do this in a static html page? I dont have access to IIS

[mendhak]

You'll need to do it through code or by setting a MIME type in IIS.