I'm using MVC 3 I would like to dynamically create a CSV file for download, but I am unsure as to the correct MVC orientated approach.
In conventional ASP.net, I would have written something like:
Response.ClearHeaders();
Response.ContentType = "text/csv";
Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", attachment;filename='Test.csv'");
Response.Write("1,2,3");
Response.End();
I have looked at the ContentResult action but it appears that I would need to create the result as a string, i.e.
return Content(myData, "text/csv");
I could, I suppose, build a string, but since these files could be several thousand lines long, this seems inefficient to me.
Could someone point me in the right direction? Thanks.
I spent some time on the similar problem yesterday, and here's how to do it right way:
public ActionResult CreateReport()
{
var reportData = MyGetDataFunction();
var serverPipe = new AnonymousPipeServerStream(PipeDirection.Out);
Task.Run(() =>
{
using (serverPipe)
{
MyWriteDataToFile(reportData, serverPipe)
}
});
var clientPipe = new AnonymousPipeClientStream(PipeDirection.In,
serverPipe.ClientSafePipeHandle);
return new FileStreamResult(clientPipe, "text/csv");
}
I have found one possible solution to this problem. You can simply define the action method to return an EmptyResult() and write directly to the response stream. For example:
public ActionResult RobotsText() {
Response.ContentType = "text/plain";
Response.Write("User-agent: *\r\nAllow: /");
return new EmptyResult();
}
This seems to work without any problems. Not sure how 'MVC' it is...
Try returning one the FileResult
s: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.mvc.fileresult.aspx
Also see this example: http://forums.asp.net/t/1491579.aspx/1
Try something like this:
public ActionResult CreateReport(string report, string writer)
{
var stream = new MemoryStream();
var streamWriter = new StreamWriter(stream);
_generateReport.GenerateReport(report, writer);
streamWriter.Flush();
stream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
return new FileStreamResult(stream, writer.MimeType);
}