Download Files in the MS Windows Operating System

[Daniel Gee]

The operating system in my PC is the MS Windows.

I use JSF and the Spring MVC framework.

How do I prompt the usual Windows dialog box, the box we have seen all the time, into the browser asking "Do you want to open or save this file?" with three buttons: Open, Save, and Cancel?

I am undertaking this task: users select "Generate MS Word Document" from a menu, which first invokes a method to retrieve requested information from the database and then uses some utility classes to format the information into a MS Word document. Thereafter, I prompt a dialog box into the browser asking users where in their local directory tree (i.e. the C: drive) the document is to be saved.

Thanks for advices.

[Merrill Higginson]

Moving to the JSF forum.

[Bauke Scholtz]

Just pass it as a file to the HttpServletResponse.

Basic example:

// Get file contents.
BufferedInputStream input = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream(getFilePath()));
int contentLength = input.available();
 
// Init response header.
FacesContext context = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
HttpServletResponse response = (HttpServletResponse) context.getExternalContext().getResponse();
response.setContentType("application/octet-stream");
response.setContentLength(contentLength);
response.setHeader("Content-disposition", "attachment; filename=\"" + getFileName() + "\"");
 
// Write file contents to response.
while (contentLength-- > 0) {
    response.getOutputStream().write(input.read());
}
 
// Finalize task.
input.close();
context.responseComplete();

getFilePath() and getFileName() are self-explaining.
They should look like "c:/path/to/file/filename.ext" and "filename.ext".
[ October 23, 2006: Message edited by: Bauke Scholtz ]

[JiaPei Jen]

Thanks a lot for the explanation and the code.