Force browser to download PDF document instead of opening it

Question

I want to make the browser download a PDF document from server instead of opening the file in browser itself. I am using C#.

Below is my sample code which I used. It

Answer 1

If you want to render the file(s) so that you could save them at your end instead of opening in the browser, you may try the following code snippet:

//create new MemoryStream object and add PDF file’s content to outStream.
MemoryStream outStream = new MemoryStream();

//specify the duration of time before a page cached on a browser expires
Response.Expires = 0;

//specify the property to buffer the output page
Response.Buffer = true;

//erase any buffered HTML output
Response.ClearContent();

//add a new HTML header and value to the Response sent to the client
Response.AddHeader(“content-disposition”, “inline; filename=” + “output.pdf”);

//specify the HTTP content type for Response as Pdf
Response.ContentType = “application/pdf”;

//write specified information of current HTTP output to Byte array
Response.BinaryWrite(outStream.ToArray());

//close the output stream
outStream.Close();

//end the processing of the current page to ensure that no other HTML content is sent
Response.End();

However, if you want to download the file using a client application then you'll have to use the WebClient class.