在ASP.net MVC4中没有页面导航的导出文件按钮

Question

I am working on an ASP.net MVC4 web application and want to support import/export from/to excel feature. I have written the code(or actions) to export to excel but am having trouble in writing Import/Export buttons.

Specifically I just want buttons which only calls the export action and do nothing on current page.

Code

1. Project Details page (View): On project details I have these buttons .
2. ExcelController have ExportToFile method
3. I tried using Ajax.ActionLink and Html.ActionLink but in both cases page navigates to

    localhost:52725/Excel/ExportToFile?pid=41  

Project Details page:

 <div class="btn-group" id="footerButtons">
        @Html.ActionLink("Edit Project", "Edit",
                new { id = Model.ProjectId },
                new { @class = "btn btn-primary " })
       @using(Html.BeginForm("ExportToFile", "Excel"))
        {
            <button class="btn" title="Export to Excel" 
                                type="submit">Export (Excel)</button>   
        }
        @Ajax.ActionLink("Export (Excel)", "ExportToFile", "Excel",
                new { pid = Model.ProjectId },
                new AjaxOptions { HttpMethod = "Post", 
                                  UpdateTargetId="footerButtons",  },
                new { @class = "btn" })
        <!-- Back to results button-->

    </div>

Excel Controller

public class ExcelController : ControllerBase
{
    public void ExportToFile(int pid = 0)
    {
       // Code to create and write to excel file
       // Main point is it returns nothing which I speculate to be wrong.          
    }
}

Answer 1

You want the method signature to look like

public FileContentResult ExportToFile(int pid = 0) 

and the output to use the Controller.File method

something like

return File(fileBytes, "application/vnd.ms-excel", unique generated file name);

to return from the controller and send data eventually to the browser

as a simple test

return this.File(new System.Text.UTF8Encoding().GetBytes("my plain text content"),
                     "text/plain", 
                     "my_file.txt");

should return a plain text file.