Trying to stream a PDF file with asp.net is producing a “damaged file”

Question

In one of my asp.net web applications I need to hide the location of a pdf file being served to the users.

Thus, I am writing a method that retrieves its binary con

Answer 1

Here is a method I use. This passes back an attachment, so IE produces an Open/Save dialog. I also happen to know that the files will not be larger than 1M, so I'm sure there's a cleaner way to do this.

I had a similar problem with PDFs, and I realized that I absolutely had to use Binary streams and ReadBytes. Anything with strings messed it up.

Stream stream = GetStream(); // Assuming you have a method that does this.
BinaryReader reader = new BinaryReader(stream);

HttpResponse response = HttpContext.Current.Response;
response.ContentType = "application/pdf";
response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=file.pdf");
response.ClearContent();
response.OutputStream.Write(reader.ReadBytes(1000000), 0, 1000000);

// End the response to prevent further work by the page processor.
response.End();