Eclipsed4utoo's Blog

Here is a short snippet that will push/serve a file from the server to the browser for download.

****** NOTE *******
This will not work inside of an AJAX UpdatePanel.  If the code is called from a button click event, that button will need to be outside of any AJAX UpdatePanel.

protected void DownloadFile(string fullFilePath)
{
      // Gets the File Name
      string fileName = fullFilePath.Substring(fullFilePath.LastIndexOf('\\') + 1);
      byte[] buffer;

      using (FileStream fileStream = new FileStream(fullFilePath, FileMode.Open))
      {
           int fileSize = (int)fileStream.Length;

           buffer = new byte[fileSize];

           // Read file into buffer
           fileStream.Read(buffer, 0, (int)fileSize);
      }

      Response.Clear();

      Response.Buffer = true;
      Response.BufferOutput = true;
      Response.ContentType = "application/x-download";
      Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=" + fileName);
      Response.CacheControl = "public";
      // writes buffer to OutputStream
      Response.OutputStream.Write(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
      Response.End();
}