Question

I am attempting to do the following:

1. Retrieve a generated pdf from a web page
2. Create an email message
3. Attach the pdf to the message
4. Send the message

I am able to retrieve the pdf from the web page and send the message with it as an attachment. However, when I try to open the attachment, I get the dreaded “Adobe Reader could not open ‘filename.pdf’ because it is either not a supported file type or because the file has been damaged” message.

The pdf is generated by an MVC3 page using a custom ActionResult to return the pdf. It looks like this

public class EnrollmentExpectationsPdfResult : FileResult
{
    IList<AdminRepEnrollmentExpectationViewModel> adminreps;

    public EnrollmentExpectationsPdfResult(IList<AdminRepEnrollmentExpectationViewModel> adminrep)
        : this("application/pdf", adminrep)
    { }

    public EnrollmentExpectationsPdfResult(string contentType, IList<AdminRepEnrollmentExpectationViewModel> adminrep)
        : base(contentType)
    {
        adminreps = adminrep;

    }

    protected override void WriteFile(HttpResponseBase response)
    {
        var cd = new ContentDisposition
        {
            Inline = true,
            FileName = "MyPDF.pdf"
        };
        response.AppendHeader("Content-Disposition", cd.ToString());

        //Skip a bunch of boring font stuff
        ...

        var writer = PdfWriter.GetInstance(doc, response.OutputStream);
        writer.PageEvent = new EnrollmentExpectationPDFPageEvent();            
        doc.Open();

        //Skip the doc writing stuff
        ...

        doc.Close();
    }
}

The controller method is here

public ActionResult EnrollmentExpectationsPDF()
{
    //skip a bunch a database stuff
    ...
    return new EnrollmentExpectationsPdfResult(adminList);
}

Here is the code at the heart of the problem…

//Get PDF
CredentialCache cc = new CredentialCache();
cc.Add(
       new Uri("http://myserver/mypdfgeneratingpage"),
       "NTLM",
       new NetworkCredential("myusername", "mypassword"));

var webRequestObject = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://iapps.national.edu/erp/Reports/EnrollmentExpectationsPDF");
webRequestObject.Credentials = cc;
var response = webRequestObject.GetResponse();
var webStream = response.GetResponseStream();

//Create Mail
System.Net.Mail.MailMessage eMail = ...

//Skipping to attachment stuff
ContentType ct = new ContentType()
{
     MediaType = MediaTypeNames.Application.Pdf,
     Name = "EnrollmentExpecations_2.pdf"
};

Attachment a = new Attachment(webStream, ct);
eMail.Attachments.Add(a);

//Send Message
....

As an experiment, I tried writing the downloaded file to disk

MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
var fileStream = File.Create("C:\\MyPDF.pdf");
webStream.CopyTo(fileStream);

Viola, I am able to open the file from the diskwithout a problem.

What am I missing in order to make the attachment readable?

Answer 1

Just to make it clear to users, thanks to @rlb.usa

“Make sure you close and flush your stream after you send the object“