Download Excel file via AJAX MVC

Question

I have a large(ish) form in MVC.

I need to be able to generate an excel file containing data from a subset of that form.

The tricky bit is that this shouldn

Answer 1

The accepted answer didn't quite work for me as I got a 502 Bad Gateway result from the ajax call even though everything seemed to be returning fine from the controller.

Perhaps I was hitting a limit with TempData - not sure, but I found that if I used IMemoryCache instead of TempData, it worked fine, so here is my adapted version of the code in the accepted answer:

public ActionResult PostReportPartial(ReportVM model){

   // Validate the Model is correct and contains valid data
   // Generate your report output based on the model parameters
   // This can be an Excel, PDF, Word file - whatever you need.

   // As an example lets assume we've generated an EPPlus ExcelPackage

   ExcelPackage workbook = new ExcelPackage();
   // Do something to populate your workbook

   // Generate a new unique identifier against which the file can be stored
   string handle = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();

   using(MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream()){
        workbook.SaveAs(memoryStream);
        memoryStream.Position = 0;
        //TempData[handle] = memoryStream.ToArray();

        //This is an equivalent to tempdata, but requires manual cleanup
        _cache.Set(handle, memoryStream.ToArray(), 
                    new MemoryCacheEntryOptions().SetSlidingExpiration(TimeSpan.FromMinutes(10))); 
                    //(I'd recommend you revise the expiration specifics to suit your application)

   }      

   // Note we are returning a filename as well as the handle
   return new JsonResult() { 
         Data = new { FileGuid = handle, FileName = "TestReportOutput.xlsx" }
   };

}

AJAX call remains as with the accepted answer (I made no changes):

$ajax({
    cache: false,
    url: '/Report/PostReportPartial',
    data: _form.serialize(), 
    success: function (data){
         var response = JSON.parse(data);
         window.location = '/Report/Download?fileGuid=' + response.FileGuid 
                           + '&filename=' + response.FileName;
    }
})

The controller action to handle the downloading of the file:

[HttpGet]
public virtual ActionResult Download(string fileGuid, string fileName)
{   
    if (_cache.Get(fileGuid) != null)
    {
        byte[] data = _cache.Get(fileGuid);
        _cache.Remove(fileGuid); //cleanup here as we don't need it in cache anymore
        return File(data, "application/vnd.ms-excel", fileName);
    }
    else
    {
        // Something has gone wrong...
        return View("Error"); // or whatever/wherever you want to return the user
    }
}

...

Now there is some extra code for setting up MemoryCache...

In order to use "_cache" I injected in the constructor for the controller like so:

using Microsoft.Extensions.Caching.Memory;
namespace MySolution.Project.Controllers
{
 public class MyController : Controller
 {
     private readonly IMemoryCache _cache;

     public LogController(IMemoryCache cache)
     {
        _cache = cache;
     }

     //rest of controller code here
  }
 }

And make sure you have the following in ConfigureServices in Startup.cs:

services.AddDistributedMemoryCache();