Question

I am calling an ajax.action link on a page. This will display the name of the document. While i click on the document, an ajax request is fired tot he controller, which will return a File Content Result and I want this file to be shown inline in the browser under the targetID div.

Code – bytestream = fs.ToArray();
fs.Close();
Response.AppendHeader(“Content-Disposition”, String.Format(“inline; filename={0}”, fileName));
return File(bytestream, “application/pdf”);

The problem is , the file is displayed as the stream and it is not displying the contents correctly.

    <legend>Document</legend>
    <% if (Model.PresentDocument != null)
       { %>
    <li><%: Ajax.ActionLink(Model.PresentDocument, "GetDocumentPage", new RouteValueDictionary(new { controller = "Document", action = "GetDocumentPage", id = Model.PresDocId }), new AjaxOptions { HttpMethod = "Post", UpdateTargetId = "Document" })%></li>
    <%} %>
    <div id="Document">
    </div>

Do i need to do anything specific for this div to display the inline pdf?

Answer 1

You cannot use AJAX to download files. One possible way to achieve this is to have a normal link and when this link is clicked use javascript to dynamically generate an iframe and point the iframe source to the controller action:

<%= Html.ActionLink(
    Model.PresentDocument, 
    "GetDocumentPage", 
    "Document",
    new { id = Model.PresDocId }, 
    new { id = "displayPdf" }
) %>

which is you could AJAXify like this (using jQuery):

$(function() {
    $('#displayPdf').click(function() {
        $('#Document').html(
            $('<iframe/>', {
                src: this.href,
                width: '300px',
                height: '150px'
            })
        );
        return false;
    });
});

which assumes that your controller action is accessible through GET requests:

public ActionResult GetDocumentPage(string id)
{
    byte[] pdf = ...
    Response.AppendHeader("Content-Disposition", String.Format("inline; filename={0}", fileName));
    return File(pdf, "application/pdf");
}