Download file of any type in Asp Net MVC using FileResult

Question

I ve had it suggested to me that I should use FileResult to allow users to download files from my Asp Net MVC application  But the only examples of this I can find always has to do with image files  specifying content type image jpeg     But what if I can t know the file type  I want users to be able to download pretty much any file from the filearea of my site   I had read one method of doing this  see a previous post for the code   that actually works fine  except for one thing  the name of the file that comes up in the Save As dialog is concatenated from the file path with underscores  folder folder file ext   Also  it seems people think I should return a FileResult instead of using this custom class that I had found BinaryContentResult   Anyone know the  correct  way of doing such a download in MVC   EDIT  I got the answer  below   but just thought I should post the full working code if someone else is interested   public ActionResult Download string filePath  string fileName        string fullName   Path Combine GetBaseDir    filePath  fileName        byte   fileBytes   GetFile fullName       return File          fileBytes  System Net Mime MediaTypeNames Application Octet  fileName      byte   GetFile string s        System IO FileStream fs   System IO File OpenRead s       byte   data   new byte fs Length       int br   fs Read data  0  data Length       if  br    fs Length          throw new System IO IOException s       return data

User · Answer

public ActionResult Download                         var document     Obtain document from database context     var cd   new System Net Mime ContentDisposition               FileName   document FileName          Inline   false                     Response AppendHeader  Content-Disposition   cd ToString                 return File document Data  document ContentType

User · Answer

if  string IsNullOrWhiteSpace fileName                   return Content  filename not present             var path   Path Combine your path  your filename            var stream   new FileStream path  FileMode Open            return File stream  System Net Mime MediaTypeNames Application Octet  fileName

User · Answer

Phil Haack has a nice article where he created a Custom File Download Action Result class  You only need to specify the virtual path of the file and the name to be saved as   I used it once and here s my code            AcceptVerbs HttpVerbs Get           public ActionResult Download int fileID                        Data LinqToSql File file    fileService GetByID fileID                return new DownloadResult   VirtualPath   GetVirtualPath file Path                                           FileDownloadName   file Name                In my example i was storing the physical path of the files so i used this helper method -that i found somewhere i can t remember- to convert it to a virtual path          private string GetVirtualPath string physicalPath                        string rootpath   Server MapPath                     physicalPath   physicalPath Replace rootpath                   physicalPath   physicalPath Replace                          return        physicalPath              Here s the full class as taken from Phill Haack s article   public class DownloadResult   ActionResult        public DownloadResult           public DownloadResult string virtualPath            this VirtualPath   virtualPath             public string VirtualPath           get          set             public string FileDownloadName           get          set             public override void ExecuteResult ControllerContext context            if   String IsNullOrEmpty FileDownloadName                 context HttpContext Response AddHeader  content-disposition                 attachment  filename     this FileDownloadName                     string filePath   context HttpContext Server MapPath this VirtualPath           context HttpContext Response TransmitFile filePath

User · Answer

Thanks to Ian Henry   In case if you need to get file from MS SQL Server here is the solution   public FileResult DownloadDocument string id                        if   string IsNullOrEmpty id                                 try                                       var fileId   Guid Parse id                        var myFile   AppModel MyFiles SingleOrDefault x   gt  x Id    fileId                        if  myFile    null                                                byte   fileBytes   myFile FileData                          return File fileBytes  System Net Mime MediaTypeNames Application Octet  myFile FileName                                                           catch                                                                return null              Where AppModel is EntityFramework model and MyFiles presents table in your database  FileData is varbinary MAX  in MyFiles table

User · Answer

GetFile should be closing the file  or opening it within a using   Then you can delete the file after conversion to bytes-- the download will be done on that byte buffer       byte   GetFile string s                byte   data          using  System IO FileStream fs   System IO File OpenRead s                         data   new byte fs Length               int br   fs Read data  0  data Length               if  br    fs Length                  throw new System IO IOException s                     return data          So in your download method             byte   fileBytes   GetFile file              delete the file after conversion to bytes         System IO File Delete file              have the file download dialog only display the base name of the file            return File fileBytes  System Net Mime MediaTypeNames Application Octet  Path GetFileName file

User · Answer

its simple just give your physical path in directoryPath with file name   public FilePathResult GetFileFromDisk string fileName        return File directoryPath   multipart form-data   fileName

User · Answer

If you re using  NET Framework 4 5 then you use use the MimeMapping GetMimeMapping string FileName  to get the MIME-Type for your file  This is how I ve used it in my action   return File Path Combine   c  path   fileFromDB FileNameOnDisk   MimeMapping GetMimeMapping fileFromDB FileName   fileFromDB FileName

User · Answer

The MVC framework supports this natively  The System Web MVC Controller File controller provides methods to return a file by name stream array   For example using a virtual path to the file you could do the following   return File virtualFilePath  System Net Mime MediaTypeNames Application Octet   Path GetFileName virtualFilePath

User · Answer

You can just specify the generic octet-stream MIME type   public FileResult Download         byte   fileBytes   System IO File ReadAllBytes   c  folder myfile ext        string fileName    myfile ext       return File fileBytes  System Net Mime MediaTypeNames Application Octet  fileName

[c#] Download file of any type in Asp.Net MVC using FileResult?

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