How to create and download a content on the fly?

adalbero

Hi,

I need to create some reports (PDF and Excel) on the fly, when the user hit the OK button, and start downloading it to the user.

I know how to create PDF and Excel in memory, but I need help how to transfer it to the user. I am using WDK 5.3 SP6.

Thanks,
Adalbero

mszurap

Hi,

You should make a little servlet or a plain JSP which "streams" the content down to the user. The servlet (or direct call to a JSP) is needed because you have to modify the Content Type header and that's not possible from a component's JSP page, as it is overridden by the WDK framework.

So put your data on the session object, pass the request to the servlet (or JSP) with javascript for example (document.location=... will do), and the servlet should set the content type and the content-disposition to tell to the browser which is the preferred filename. After writing the output, don't forget to remove the data from your session object.