save the document created by docX into response and send it to user for downloading

Question

I am trying to use the amazing DocX library on codeplex to create a word document.

when the user clicks a button, the document is created and I want to be able to send it to the user immediately via response.. I am doing something similar to this now:

Edited code based on suggestions

using (DocX Report = DocX.Create(string.Format("Report-{0}.doc", DateTime.Now.Ticks)))
{
    Paragraph p = Report.InsertParagraph();
    p.Append("Title").FontSize(30).Bold()
    .Append("Sub title").FontSize(28)
        .AppendLine()
        .Append(DateTime.Now.Date) 
    ;

    MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
    Report.SaveAs(ms);


    Response.Clear();
    Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "attachment; filename=\"" + fileName + ".docx\"");
    Response.ContentType = "application/msword";

    Response.Write(ms);
    Response.End();
}

I have tried a few variations of this.. but I am not able to achieve what I want.. Looking at this answer I can possibly save the document on the server and open with io stream.. but I want to avoid that extra step (and then I need to delete the file too)

I don't see the point of creating a file for few milli seconds.. there has to be a way to save the contents and send them to response stream.. right?

How'd I go about it? thanks..

EDIT: my current code either throws up cannot open file (Access denied) error If I am using file stream, OR downloads an empty document file without any content (sometimes, type of response is written to document)

---

This code gets me an MS word document with System.IO.MemoryStream as it's content..

---

Okay, here is the final working solution:

For some reason, DocX library doesn't want to save to Response.OutputStream directly, so I had to save it to memory stream and write the memory stream to response, like Neil & Daniel suggested. Here's what worked for me:

MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream()
Report.SaveAs(ms);

Response.Clear();
Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "attachment; filename=\"" + fileName + ".doc\");
Response.ContentType = "application/msword";

ms.WriteTo(Response.OutputStream);
Response.End();

Answer 1

This might be a bit late, but I found a way to get this working with FileStreamResult:

    public FileStreamResult DownloadDocument()
    {
        using (DocX document = DocX.Create(@"Test.docx"))
        {
            // Insert a new Paragraphs.
            Paragraph p = document.InsertParagraph();

            p.Append("I am ").Append("bold").Bold()
            .Append(" and I am ")
            .Append("italic").Italic().Append(".")
            .AppendLine("I am ")
            .Append("Arial Black")
            .Font(new FontFamily("Arial Black"))
            .Append(" and I am not.")
            .AppendLine("I am ")
            .Append("BLUE").Color(Color.Blue)
            .Append(" and I am")
            .Append("Red").Color(Color.Red).Append(".");

            var ms = new MemoryStream();
            document.SaveAs(ms);
            ms.Position = 0;

            var file = new FileStreamResult(ms, "application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document")
            {
                FileDownloadName = string.Format("test_{0}.docx", DateTime.Now.ToString("ddMMyyyyHHmmss"))
            };

            return file;

        }
    }

The important bit is setting the Position of the memorystream back to 0, otherwise it appeared to be at the end, and the file was returning empty.

Answer 2

Try using a MemoryStream instead of a FileStream.

Your current code looks really wrong:

You are saving the report to the OutputStream of the current response and then clear that response (!)