In a regular MVC controller, we can output pdf with a FileContentResult
.
public FileContentResult Test(TestViewModel vm)
{
var stream = new MemoryStream();
//... add content to the stream.
return File(stream.GetBuffer(), "application/pdf", "test.pdf");
}
But how can we change it into an ApiController
?
[HttpPost]
public IHttpActionResult Test(TestViewModel vm)
{
//...
return Ok(pdfOutput);
}
Here is what I've tried but it doesn't seem to work.
[HttpGet]
public IHttpActionResult Test()
{
var stream = new MemoryStream();
//...
var content = new StreamContent(stream);
content.Headers.ContentType = new MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/pdf");
content.Headers.ContentLength = stream.GetBuffer().Length;
return Ok(content);
}
The returned result displayed in the browser is:
{"Headers":[{"Key":"Content-Type","Value":["application/pdf"]},{"Key":"Content-Length","Value":["152844"]}]}
And there is a similar post on SO: Returning binary file from controller in ASP.NET Web API . It talks about output an existing file. But I could not make it work with a stream.
Any suggestions?
Instead of returning StreamContent
as the Content
, I can make it work with ByteArrayContent
.
[HttpGet]
public HttpResponseMessage Generate()
{
var stream = new MemoryStream();
// processing the stream.
var result = new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.OK)
{
Content = new ByteArrayContent(stream.ToArray())
};
result.Content.Headers.ContentDisposition =
new System.Net.Http.Headers.ContentDispositionHeaderValue("attachment")
{
FileName = "CertificationCard.pdf"
};
result.Content.Headers.ContentType =
new MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/octet-stream");
return result;
}