Question

I have an MVC3 app that allows the user to dowload a file to their hard drive or view it in a browser. The file is stored on a filesher thats not accessible to the internet. So the file’s byte array is stored in memory and then sent to the browser like this:

            /// <summary>
    /// overrides actionresult method so document can be viewed in browser window
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="context"></param>
    public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context)
    {
        // get current context and set values
        var response = context.HttpContext.Response;
        response.Clear();
        response.BufferOutput = false;   // to prevent buffering 
        response.Cache.SetCacheability(HttpCacheability.NoCache);
        response.ContentType = ContentType;
        response.AddHeader("Content-Length", Length.ToString());

        var ext = Path.GetExtension(FileName);

        if (!Show)
        response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "attachment; filename=\"" + FileName+ "\"");

        response.ContentEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8;

        var stream = new MemoryStream(ContentBytes);
        stream.WriteTo(response.OutputStream);
        stream.Dispose();

    }

I cant view pdfs for some reason. I can download them but not view them. Im attaching a sample project here showinbrowser.zip. Its VS2010 sp1. Can someone show me how to display a PDF file in a new browser window/tab thats stored in memory? Thanks

Answer 1

Why not use the Controller.File method which handles this for you ?

public ActionResult _ShowDocument(string id)
{
  byte[] fileData=GetByteArrayFilefromId(id);
  return File(fileData,"application/pdf","somefile.pdf");
}