Download file directly, not from window.open(url)

Question

I'm currently having some session issues in an ASP.NET application. The main application opens an ASP.NET dialog, which contains a link to a PDF file. This file is 'downloaded' by using window.open('myurl/file.pdf');

This results in a new window opening, but the file cannot be downloaded due to the session object is not transferred (keep in mind the solution is a bit more complex, so trying to keep the session in the new window will not work because it's embedded in an C# WebBrowser frame).

Are there any possibilities downloading the file directly from the link, not through window.open()?

Answer 1

If the file exists on the file system, you could just link to it. I know this sometimes winds up opening the file in the browser depending on the user's setup.

If you don't want to do this through opening a window and the file is generated dynamically:

1. Use a Button or a LinkButton

2. Use Response.AddHeader in the Click event of your Button/LinkButton

     Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "attachment;filename={filename.extension}") Response.ContentType = "application/{MIME type here}" 

   3. Stream the results to the client (you'd need to look this up, I do it a lot with Excel by streaming DataGrids but not so much with PDFs)

This should prompt the user what to do...

Answer 2

This got resolved by simply calling window.dialogArguments.MyFunction(url), which invokes the parent windows MyFunction(url). In that window I used window.external.MyFunctionToDotNet(url), which again took the cookies from my WebBrowser in a WebClient and downloaded the file.