ASP.NET MVC cannot stream files

Question

I have a ASP.NET MVC 4 site that creates an excel file using OPEN XML SDK. I simply point the hyperlink to the proper controller and it generates the OPEN XML excel document and writes the stream to response header and done. In IE 9 and Chrome this works fine. File gets downloaded with the given file name and proper contents. However, just recently I upgraded my browser to IE 10 and now instead of downloading the file and opening up in excel I get the error that could not open 'URI'. When I click ok it gives another error: Microsoft Excel cannot access the file 'URI'. There are several possible reasons:

I don't understand why this would work in IE 9 and chrome and not in IE 10. I debugged the response headers with fiddlers and it has the proper content type, and content length set:

Content Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet

Content Disposition: attachment; filename=result.xlsx

Content length: 1232

Is there something that I am missing?

Code snippet: This all is part of

public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context)
{
...
....
..
    extention = "xlsx";
    response.ContentType = "application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet";
    response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition",
                                    String.Format("attachment; filename={0}.{1}", fileName, extention));
    response.AddHeader("Content-Length", mem.Length.ToString());
    mem.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin); // Go back to the begining.
    mem.CopyTo(response.OutputStream);
    context.HttpContext.ApplicationInstance.CompleteRequest();
}

Are you delivering the content via SSL? Also, what are the several possible reasons it lists? — xDaevax, Jul 18 '14 at 18:46
`writes the stream to response header and done`, can you show the code? — Mark, Jul 18 '14 at 18:50
Please, show some code... this answer solved a similar problem for me: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16655566/ie-10-file-download-issues — celerno, Jul 18 '14 at 19:12
@xDaevax: I am seeing the same problem without SSL. I doesn't say any possible reasons. — Yogesh, Jul 18 '14 at 19:32
@cchdev answer is the correct way to transmit a file in ASP.NET MVC. I don't know of a valid reason for not using the Controller.File method. In short you shouldn't be implementing it this way — Mick, Jul 25 '14 at 05:15
@Mick: we have an wrapper which based on request headers will response with json/xml/excel/csv/tsv/dsv. I believe it's an ie 10 bug because the same code works in ie 11 as well. — Yogesh, Jul 25 '14 at 12:53

cchdev · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-24T13:47:50.813

As a workaround, Controller.File works for me with ASP.NET MVC 4 and IE 10:

public class DownloadController : Controller
{
    public ActionResult GetFile()
    {
        ...

        mem.Position = 0;

        return File(
            mem, 
            "application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet", 
            "result.xlsx");
    }
}

EDIT

So I have been browsing the MVC source code at CodePlex and found a few implementation details that differ from your code snippet:

Content-Length header is never set
Instead of calling Stream.CopyTo, they use a simple Stream.Read, Stream.Write loop with buffer size of 0x1000
When setting Content-Disposition header, they check whether file download name contains UTF-8 chars, and if so, encode them according to RFC 2231. See ContentDispositionUtil.GetHeaderValue
context.HttpContext.ApplicationInstance.CompleteRequest() is never called

Now you could try applying these changes one by one and see which one makes it work with IE 10.

Although I tried this as well but couldn't get it to work. I am accepting this as the answer as it was the best attempt to help me. — Yogesh, Jul 28 '14 at 00:40

Ivan Samygin · Answer 2 · 2014-07-22T22:00:02.520

0

I guess it's an IE10 bug. But maybe you still can work around it.

Based on this post and a few others. Please check that:

Both full URI and the filename of Content Disposition header do not contains special symbols and that their lengths are less than 105. Just use regular A-Za-z0-9 symbols for instance.
Try to add "X-UA-Compatible" HTTP header with "IE=9" value.

edited Jul 22 '14 at 22:00

answered Jul 22 '14 at 21:52

Ivan Samygin

4,210
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Try also to play with Excel file type settings. See **Let me fix it myself** section of MS kb http://support.microsoft.com/kb/162059/en – Ivan Samygin Jul 23 '14 at 15:26

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 23 '14 at 01:41

try these MIME types:- for old version:-

Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel";
Response.AppendHeader("content-disposition", "attachment; filename=myfile.xls");

for 2007:-

Response.ContentType = "application/application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet";
Response.AppendHeader("content-disposition", "attachment; filename=result.xlsx");

for csv files which you need to open in excel is:-

Response.AddHeader "Content-Disposition", "Attachment;Filename=myfile.csv"

in last you can try:-

Response.ContentType = "application/octet-stream";
Response.AppendHeader("content-disposition", "attachment; filename=result.xlsx");

thanks

ASP.NET MVC cannot stream files

3 Answers3