Creating an Excel file on the fly and have it download/save on the client

Question

Question: What is an alternative to the last three lines of the following code in ASP.NET Core 1.1 and/or what are workarounds? On these last three lines VS2015 is complaining HttpResponse does not contain a definition for OutputStream, Flush(), End()

Background: In my ASP.NET Core 1.1 app I'm using EPPlus.Core to export data on the fly to Excel and have it downloaded/save on the client side. As a starter, I'm trying to mimic the following example (taken from here), but VS2015 is not recognizing the last 3 lines of this code.

public void ExportListUsingEPPlus()
{
    var data = new[]{
                        new{ Name="Ram", Email="[email protected]", Phone="111-222-3333" },
                        new{ Name="Shyam", Email="[email protected]", Phone="159-222-1596" },
                        new{ Name="Mohan", Email="[email protected]", Phone="456-222-4569" },
                        new{ Name="Sohan", Email="[email protected]", Phone="789-456-3333" },
                        new{ Name="Karan", Email="[email protected]", Phone="111-222-1234" },
                        new{ Name="Brij", Email="[email protected]", Phone="111-222-3333" }
                };

    ExcelPackage excel = new ExcelPackage();
    var workSheet = excel.Workbook.Worksheets.Add("Sheet1");
    workSheet.Cells[1, 1].LoadFromCollection(data, true);
    using (var memoryStream = new MemoryStream())
    {
        Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet";
        Response.Headers.Add("content-disposition", "attachment;  filename=Contact.xlsx");
        excel.SaveAs(memoryStream);
        memoryStream.WriteTo(Response.OutputStream);
        Response.Flush();
        Response.End();
    }
}

Answer 1

You can return one of FileStreamResult in Controller action.

It returns a file in the specified fileStream with the specified contentType as the Content-Type and the specified fileDownloadName as the suggested file name.

public virtual FileStreamResult File(Stream fileStream, string contentType, string fileDownloadName)

---

EDIT:

Sample action method-

var data = new[]{
                        new{ Name="Ram", Email="[email protected]", Phone="111-222-3333" },
                        new{ Name="Shyam", Email="[email protected]", Phone="159-222-1596" },
                        new{ Name="Mohan", Email="[email protected]", Phone="456-222-4569" },
                        new{ Name="Sohan", Email="[email protected]", Phone="789-456-3333" },
                        new{ Name="Karan", Email="[email protected]", Phone="111-222-1234" },
                        new{ Name="Brij", Email="[email protected]", Phone="111-222-3333" }
                };

            ExcelPackage excel = new ExcelPackage();
            var workSheet = excel.Workbook.Worksheets.Add("Sheet1");
            workSheet.Cells[1, 1].LoadFromCollection(data, true);

            //var memoryStream = new MemoryStream(excel.GetAsByteArray());

            //Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet";
            //Response.Headers.Add("content-disposition", "attachment;  filename=Contact.xlsx");
            //excel.SaveAs(memoryStream);
            //memoryStream.WriteTo(Response.OutputStream);
            //Response.Flush();
            //Response.End();

            return File(excel.GetAsByteArray(), "application/vnd.ms-excel", "Contact.xlsx");

Generated Excel screenshot-