Re: [cgiapp] How to download a dynamically generated file

[Steve Hay <suppressed>]

Hi John,

John Crowley wrote:

> Steve,
>
> I believe the best way would be to redirect the user to a page which has its
> headers set to the appropriate MIME type. In a simple (non-C::A) CGI, you can
> use the following line...
Hmm.  So I use CGI-Application to generate the file and then send a 
redirect header.  The page that the user is redirected to is then 
handled by a non-CGI-Application CGI script that downloads that file, yes?

I would rather do it in one step rather than two, and all inside 
CGI-Application, if possible.

It seems a shame to have to step outside of CGI-Application to achieve 
something so simple.

> [ generate your file ] 
>
> print header(-type => "text/comma-separated-values",
> 	     -attachment => "download.csv");
I had a look at the CGI.pm manpage, and it says this about the 
-attachment argument:

"The -attachment parameter can be used to turn the page into an 
attachment. Instead of displaying the page, some browsers will prompt 
the user to save it to disk. The value of the argument is the suggested 
name for the saved file."

That's not inappropriate behaviour for a ZIP file download, but would be 
annoying for PDF files which the browser normally "handles" by passing 
to the Adobe Reader.

So I prefer not to use the -attachment argument in those headers.  The 
browser will still pop up a "Save As..." dialogue box anyway if it 
doesn't recognise the MIME type or has no action configured for it.

> Then print the data to the browser. 
>
> For PDFs and ZIPs, I'm not sure if you can simply print, but let us know if
> you succeed.
Yes, you can print anything you like to the browser as long as (1) 
you've set the correct Content-Type in the headers (using the -type 
argument) and (2) you've set both the filehandle that you're reading the 
file in from and STDOUT that you're writing the file out to to "binary 
mode" if you're on a platform like Windoze that does nasty CRLF 
translations otherwise.

- Steve


---------------------------------------------------------------------
Web Archive:  http://www.mail-archive.com/suppressed/
             http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=cgiapp&r=1&w=2
To unsubscribe, e-mail: suppressed
For additional commands, e-mail: suppressed