Download file of any type in Asp.Net MVC using FileResult?

Question

You can just specify the generic octet-stream MIME type:

public FileResult Download()
{
    byte[] fileBytes = System.IO.File.ReadAllBytes(@"c:\folder\myfile.ext");
    string fileName = "myfile.ext";
    return File(fileBytes, System.Net.Mime.MediaTypeNames.Application.Octet, fileName);
}

The MVC framework supports this natively. The System.Web.MVC.Controller.File controller provides methods to return a file by name/stream/array.

For example using a virtual path to the file you could do the following.

return File(virtualFilePath, System.Net.Mime.MediaTypeNames.Application.Octet,  Path.GetFileName(virtualFilePath));

If you're using .NET Framework 4.5 then you use use the MimeMapping.GetMimeMapping(string FileName) to get the MIME-Type for your file. This is how I've used it in my action.

return File(Path.Combine(@"c:\path", fileFromDB.FileNameOnDisk), MimeMapping.GetMimeMapping(fileFromDB.FileName), fileFromDB.FileName);

Phil Haack has a nice article where he created a Custom File Download Action Result class. You only need to specify the virtual path of the file and the name to be saved as.

I used it once and here's my code.

        [AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Get)]
        public ActionResult Download(int fileID)
        {
            Data.LinqToSql.File file = _fileService.GetByID(fileID);

            return new DownloadResult { VirtualPath = GetVirtualPath(file.Path),
                                        FileDownloadName = file.Name };
        }

In my example i was storing the physical path of the files so i used this helper method -that i found somewhere i can't remember- to convert it to a virtual path

        private string GetVirtualPath(string physicalPath)
        {
            string rootpath = Server.MapPath("~/");

            physicalPath = physicalPath.Replace(rootpath, "");
            physicalPath = physicalPath.Replace("\\", "/");

            return "~/" + physicalPath;
        }

Here's the full class as taken from Phill Haack's article

public class DownloadResult : ActionResult {

    public DownloadResult() {}

    public DownloadResult(string virtualPath) {
        this.VirtualPath = virtualPath;
    }

    public string VirtualPath {
        get;
        set;
    }

    public string FileDownloadName {
        get;
        set;
    }

    public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context) {
        if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(FileDownloadName)) {
            context.HttpContext.Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", 
            "attachment; filename=" + this.FileDownloadName)
        }

        string filePath = context.HttpContext.Server.MapPath(this.VirtualPath);
        context.HttpContext.Response.TransmitFile(filePath);
    }
}

Thanks to Ian Henry!

In case if you need to get file from MS SQL Server here is the solution.

public FileResult DownloadDocument(string id)
        {
            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(id))
            {
                try
                {
                    var fileId = Guid.Parse(id);

                    var myFile = AppModel.MyFiles.SingleOrDefault(x => x.Id == fileId);

                    if (myFile != null)
                    {
                        byte[] fileBytes = myFile.FileData;
                        return File(fileBytes, System.Net.Mime.MediaTypeNames.Application.Octet, myFile.FileName);
                    }
                }
                catch
                {
                }
            }

            return null;
        }

Where AppModel is EntityFramework model and MyFiles presents table in your database. FileData is varbinary(MAX) in MyFiles table.

its simple just give your physical path in directoryPath with file name

public FilePathResult GetFileFromDisk(string fileName)
{
    return File(directoryPath, "multipart/form-data", fileName);
}