how can I do write a PDF to a asp.net page?

Question

I'm trying to get a PDF page that is within the context of my website to display when a user designates. I have the following code:

    if (context.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated)
    {
        string SampleURL = context.Request.CurrentExecutionFilePath; //CurrentExecutionFilePath;

        context.Response.Buffer = true;
        context.Response.Clear();
        using (FileStream fs = new FileStream(SampleURL,FileMode.Open)) //System.IO.File.OpenRead(path))
        {
            int length = (int)fs.Length;
            byte[] buffer;

            using (BinaryReader br = new BinaryReader(fs))
            {
                buffer = br.ReadBytes(length);
            }

            context.Response.Clear();
            context.Response.Buffer = true;
            context.Response.ContentType = "application/pdf";
            context.Response.BinaryWrite(buffer);
            context.Response.End();
        }
    }
    else
    {
        context.Response.Redirect(
           "~/Error/invalid_access.aspx");
    }

The only problem is I cannot get the PATH to work correctly. If I was to call the PDF directly thru the URL it would be http://www.abc.com/reports/sample.pdf but I cannot get myself back to that location. I implemented an HTTPHandler to prevent someone from going to the URL but now I need to stream the file back to a browser and write it.

thoughts, comments, suggestions?

edit: Its the PATH that I cannot get the relative url to point to the proper location. context.Request.CurrentExecutionFilePath gives me "/www.abc.com/sample_reports/sample.pdf" but I just can't seem to twist that around to be able to open/read it

Answer 1

What do you mean by path? Name of the file? You can do that with Content-Disposition header.

Response.Addheader "Content-Disposition", "attachment;Filename=WhateverName.pdf"

Answer 2

You have to open it from the local server. If it is located on your server you can do

FileStream fs = new FileStream(Server.MapPath("/example.pdf"),FileMode.Open)

If you want to load it from an URL you have to download the PDF first.

   WebClient client = new WebClient ();

    // Add a user agent header in case the 
    // requested URI contains a query.

    client.Headers.Add ("user-agent", "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.2; .NET CLR 1.0.3705;)");

    Stream data = client.OpenRead (args[0]);
    StreamReader reader = new StreamReader (data);
    string s = reader.ReadToEnd ();` 

Answer 3

I would change a few things

First I might consider switching the file reading to something easier if it's a file on disk

byte[] buffer = File.ReadAllBytes( path );

now for the context

context.Response.Clear();
context.Response.ClearHeaders();
context.Response.Buffer = true;
context.Response.ContentType = "application/pdf";
context.Response.AddHeader( "content-disposition","attachment; filename=file.pdf" );
context.Response.AddHeader("Content-Length", buffer .Length.ToString() );
context.Response.BinaryWrite(buffer);
context.Response.Close();
context.Response.End();
context.Response.Flush();

Is the above code overkill? Possibly but I've found with all the different browsers running around overkill is worth it.