download pdf from url best approach

Question

I am using the following code below to download Pdf from a url, i would like to have some idea what would be the best practise, I am just concern with performance and file size thanks.

using( WebClient wc = new WebClient() )
{
  byte[] data = wc.DownloadData("http://localhost:81/File/sample.pdf");

  Response.Clear();
  Response.ContentType = "application/pdf";
  Response.AppendHeader( "Content-Disposition" , "attachment;filename=data.pdf" );
  Response.BufferOutput = true;
  Response.AddHeader("Content-Length", data.Length.ToString());
  Response.BinaryWrite(data);
  Response.End();

}

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11901381/downloading-pdf-file-using-webrequests ? — Nathan Cooper, May 19 '15 at 21:34

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered May 19 '15 at 22:10

If you are concerned about performance/efficiency/security I'd recommend using the framework's HttpClient using it you could do something like this:

using(var client = new HttpClient())
{
    var stream = await client.GetStreamAsync(url);

    // OR to get the content of the file as you do now
    var data = await client.GetByteArrayAsync(url);

    // do whatever you need to do with your file here
}

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered May 19 '15 at 22:36

If you're concerned about "performance and file size" (by which I assume you mean time on the wire), you're request for the *.pdf file should contain an accept-encoding header, something like this:

Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate

Telling the server that you would prefer the pdf file compressed. Then, in your response, you should

Ensure that response body is suitably compressed in accordance with your requestor's accept-encoding header, and
Add the correct content-encoding header to your response. Something like
```
Content-Encoding: gzip
```

If you need tools for compression and decompression, DotNetZip is great. Price is right, too.

download pdf from url best approach

2 Answers2