How do I generate and send a .zip file to a user in C# ASP.NET?

Question

I need to construct and send a zip to a user.

I\'ve seen examples doing one or the other, but not both, and am curious if there are any \'best practices\' or anythin

Answer 1

I would second the vote for SharpZipLib to create the Zip file. Then you'll want to append a response header to the output to force the download dialog.

http://aspalliance.com/259

should give you a good starting point to achieve that. You basically need to add a response header, set the content type and write the file to the output stream:

Response.AppendHeader( "content-disposition", "attachment; filename=" + name );
Response.ContentType = "application/zip";
Response.WriteFile(pathToFile);

That last line could be changed to a Response.Write(filecontents) if you don't want to save to a temp file.