File downloads...

[Tad Dicks]

I've implemented a page where users can upload files, and then others can download them (or view them).
I've just listed links to the locations of all the files. Normally the browser asks if you wish to download it or if its something the browser understands (pdf, doc, gif etc). Everything works fine except excel files, firefox will ask if you wish to open it with excel or download it. IE will interpret it as a text file and list a bunch of "random text", if you right click the link IE will offer to save the file as .htm.

Why is this? I've visited other sites where excel files are opened seemlessly by my browser. I've checked the uploaded excel files they open under excel fine. They weren't corrupted during the upload and I've "re-downloaded" them and excel will again open them with out a problem. Just the browser won't recognize it as an excel file.

-Tad

[Jason Menard]

You need to set the content type of your response to "application/excel". You should be able to accomplish this by doing something similar to the following:

response.setContentType("application/excel");
[ March 31, 2005: Message edited by: Jason Menard ]

[Jason Menard]

Check out this link for more info:

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/javatips/jw-javatip94.html

[Tad Dicks]

I guess I'm being (or was being) naive. I merely placed a link to the file's location (almost as if it were an html document).

Thanks for the link.

-Tad

[Tad Dicks]

Is there a mime/type I could set all files to so that the file would download to the users machine instead of opening in the browser regardless of extension/file type? So that even an .htm file would instead be downloaded?

-Tad

[Jason Menard]

It really depends on the client's browser preferences. However, you might try application/octet-stream, which is the MIME type normally associated with .exe and .bin files. As a general practice though, it's best not to try and override the client's preferences. With this in mind, it's preferable to send the correct MIME type for the data you're sending, and let the client browser determine how it should be handled.

[Tad Dicks]

I would definitely agree its best not to override the browsers preferences, but I just do what I'm told. Initially I thought this just wasn't possible (and I guess technically I was right).
I'll give your suggestion a try though. Thanks again.

-Tad

[Tad Dicks]

Well that works really well, except for files with spaces in the name. I end up with 0 byte files.
I'm thinking it has something to do with this part of the code:

 fileURL = sb.substring(0, sb.lastIndexOf('/')+1)+ request.getParameter("url");
        fileName = fileURL.substring(fileURL.lastIndexOf("/")+1);
        BufferedInputStream  bis = null;
        BufferedOutputStream bos = null;
        response.setHeader("Content-disposition", "attachment; filename="+fileName);
        try 
        {
    URL url = new URL(fileURL);
            bis = new BufferedInputStream(url.openStream());
            bos = new BufferedOutputStream(out);
            byte[] buff = new byte[2048]; 

The spaces on the actual page are converted into +'s
I think the request.getParameter("url") is turning the +'s back into spaces and that this maybe causing the problem trying to create a URL object from a string thats got spaces in it?

-Tad

[sreenath reddy]

Hi Ted

Yes there is a way to open every file using a down load dialog box . There is a header in the response on setting this even html,txt file will be forced as download .

response.setContentType("application/x-download");

and coming to giving direct link to the document is not a good idea as u cant catch the filenotfound exeception(ofcourse u can handle that declaritively) and even this reveals the document path to the client which hampers the security of ur web application .