Question

I am trying to respond back to a client with a PDF stored in a MSSQL varbinary(MAX) field. The response works on my localhost and a test server over http connection, but does not work on the production server over https connection. I am using just a simple BinaryWrite (code below).

    byte[] displayFile = DatabaseFiles.getPdfById(id);      Response.ContentType = 'application/pdf';     Response.BinaryWrite(displayFile); 

Nothing fancy here. Just grab the binary data, set the content type, and write back to client. Is there anything special that needs to be done in order to respond back over https in this way?

Edit: By doesn’t work, I mean that I get a blank document in the browser. Acrobat does not load in browser.

Edit: I just noticed that this problem is only occurring in IE 7. The PDF loads correctly in Firefox 3. Our client uses IE 7 exclusively (better than IE 6 which I persuaded them upgrade from…lol).

Edit: Tried to add the header ‘content-disposition’ to make the file act as an attachment. Browser failed to loaded under SSL with the IE error ‘Internet Explorer cannot download displayFile.aspx from ProductionServer.net.’ (Code Below)

    byte[] displayFile = DatabaseFiles.getPdfById(id);     Response.Clear();     Response.AddHeader('content-disposition', String.Format('attachment;filename={0}', fileName));     Response.ContentType = 'application/pdf';     Response.BinaryWrite(displayFile); 

Edit: If the file is viewed over http on the Production Server, the browser displays the code for the PDF like it was being viewed through NotePad. (e.g. %PDF-1.4 %âãÏÓ 6 0 obj <> endobj xref 6 33 …etc)

Answer 1

I just managed to get around this by replacing

Response.Clear(); 

with

Response.ClearContent(); Response.ClearHeaders(); 

so the whole thing looks like:

byte[] downloadBytes = doc.GetData(); Response.ClearContent(); Response.ClearHeaders();  Response.Buffer = true; Response.ContentType = 'application/pdf'; Response.AddHeader('Content-Length', downloadBytes.Length.ToString()); Response.AddHeader('Content-Disposition', 'attachment; filename=myFile.pdf'); Response.BinaryWrite(downloadBytes); Response.Flush(); Response.End();