Download file of any type in Asp.Net MVC using FileResult?

Question

I\'ve had it suggested to me that I should use FileResult to allow users to download files from my Asp.Net MVC application. But the only examples of this I can find always h

Answer 1

Phil Haack has a nice article where he created a Custom File Download Action Result class. You only need to specify the virtual path of the file and the name to be saved as.

I used it once and here's my code.

        [AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Get)]
        public ActionResult Download(int fileID)
        {
            Data.LinqToSql.File file = _fileService.GetByID(fileID);

            return new DownloadResult { VirtualPath = GetVirtualPath(file.Path),
                                        FileDownloadName = file.Name };
        }

In my example i was storing the physical path of the files so i used this helper method -that i found somewhere i can't remember- to convert it to a virtual path

        private string GetVirtualPath(string physicalPath)
        {
            string rootpath = Server.MapPath("~/");

            physicalPath = physicalPath.Replace(rootpath, "");
            physicalPath = physicalPath.Replace("\\", "/");

            return "~/" + physicalPath;
        }

Here's the full class as taken from Phill Haack's article

public class DownloadResult : ActionResult {

    public DownloadResult() {}

    public DownloadResult(string virtualPath) {
        this.VirtualPath = virtualPath;
    }

    public string VirtualPath {
        get;
        set;
    }

    public string FileDownloadName {
        get;
        set;
    }

    public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context) {
        if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(FileDownloadName)) {
            context.HttpContext.Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", 
            "attachment; filename=" + this.FileDownloadName)
        }

        string filePath = context.HttpContext.Server.MapPath(this.VirtualPath);
        context.HttpContext.Response.TransmitFile(filePath);
    }
}