How to force browser to download file?

Question

Everything works fine, but only if file is small, about 1MB, when I tried it with bigger files, like 20MB my browser display it, instead of force to download, I tried many headers so far, now my code looks:

PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
String fileName = request.getParameter("filename");

File f= new File(fileName);

InputStream in = new FileInputStream(f);
BufferedInputStream bin = new BufferedInputStream(in);
DataInputStream din = new DataInputStream(bin);

while(din.available() > 0){
    out.print(din.readLine());
    out.print("\n");
}

response.setContentType("application/force-download");
response.setContentLength((int)f.length());
response.setHeader("Content-Transfer-Encoding", "binary");
response.setHeader("Content-Disposition","attachment; filename=\"" + "xxx\"");//fileName);


in.close();
bin.close();
din.close();

Answer 1

You are setting the response headers after writing the contents of the file to the output stream. This is quite late in the response lifecycle to be setting headers. The correct sequence of operations should be to set the headers first, and then write the contents of the file to the servlet's outputstream.

Therefore, your method should be written as follows (this won't compile as it is a mere representation):

response.setContentType("application/force-download");
response.setContentLength((int)f.length());
        //response.setContentLength(-1);
response.setHeader("Content-Transfer-Encoding", "binary");
response.setHeader("Content-Disposition","attachment; filename=\"" + "xxx\"");//fileName);
...
...
File f= new File(fileName);

InputStream in = new FileInputStream(f);
BufferedInputStream bin = new BufferedInputStream(in);
DataInputStream din = new DataInputStream(bin);

while(din.available() > 0){
    out.print(din.readLine());
    out.print("\n");
}

The reason for the failure is that it is possible for the actual headers sent by the servlet would be different from what you are intending to send. After all, if the servlet container does not know what headers (which appear before the body in the HTTP response), then it may set appropriate headers to ensure that the response is valid; setting the headers after the file has been written is therefore futile and redundant as the container might have already set the headers. You could confirm this by looking at the network traffic using Wireshark or a HTTP debugging proxy like Fiddler or WebScarab.

You may also refer to the Java EE API documentation for ServletResponse.setContentType to understand this behavior:

Sets the content type of the response being sent to the client, if the response has not been committed yet. The given content type may include a character encoding specification, for example, text/html;charset=UTF-8. The response's character encoding is only set from the given content type if this method is called before getWriter is called.

This method may be called repeatedly to change content type and character encoding. This method has no effect if called after the response has been committed.

...

Answer 2

Set content-type and other headers before you write the file out. For small files the content is buffered, and the browser gets the headers first. For big ones the data come first.

Answer 3

This is from a php script which solves the problem perfectly with every browser I've tested (FF since 3.5, IE8+, Chrome)

header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"".$fname_local."\"");
header("Content-Type: application/force-download");
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
header("Content-Length: ".filesize($fname));

So as far as I can see, you're doing everything correctly. Have you checked your browser settings?