How to let user download data to a file

Question

I want to let user download data I am displaying elsewhere in the website as reports.

I am using Asp.net core 2.1 rc1 MVC app.

My cunning plan was to create a special view which would render data as a tab delimited text and use response headers to make browser download it instead of displaying HTML. This almost works perfectly.

My "HttpGet" code in the controller looks like this:

 Response.Headers.Add("Content-disposition", "attachment; filename=export.tsv");
 return View(MyModel);

My razor view looks like this:

@Model IEnumerable<MyModel>
@{
     Layout = null;
     String LineBreak = Environment.NewLine;
     String Tab = "\t";
}

Header1 Header2 ...

    @if (Model.Count > 0)
    {
        foreach (MyModel myModel in Model)
        {
            @myModel.Field1@Html.Raw(@Tab)@myModel.Field2 ... @Html.Raw(@LineBreak)
        }
    }

This works splendidly except that this ugly error message appears as a first line in the file:

System.Collections.Generic.List`1[MyApp.Models.MyModel] IEnumerable<MyModel>

The rest of the file is exactly what I need.

Does anyone know how to remove this message? Or if there is something wrong with my general approach...

Full project available here: https://github.com/under3415/ExportError/ (just click on download link and examine the file)

That's not an error message. You are somewhere rendering that, perhaps some `@Html.Raw(model)` or something like that. — Camilo Terevinto, May 13 '18 at 22:00
This is probably not an error message, but the result of a call to `ToString()` on some object. — Cee McSharpface, May 13 '18 at 22:00
The thing is both ToString and Html.Raw work just fine. Everything is displayed perfectly. — under, May 13 '18 at 22:03
hi, I've added the project to github: https://github.com/under3415/ExportError — under, May 14 '18 at 01:26

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 14 '18 at 16:19

1

You've written @Model, while the correct syntax is @model (lowercase - it's case-sensitive).

A first-line @model directive specifies the model type. @Model dereferences the actual model instance. What you're seeing is its ToString representation.

answered May 14 '18 at 16:19

khellang

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Thanks so much, totally missed that! Still not sure why was everything else working!? – under May 14 '18 at 19:47

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 14 '18 at 07:48

0

You're getting this error because you're returning view with the model return View(MyModel);, you should be using FileResult

Here are the complete instructions on it Download file of any type in Asp.Net MVC using FileResult?

answered May 14 '18 at 07:48

Ikram Shah

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I don't really want to return a file. All my formatting is done in the view. I can easily return an Excel file or a tab delimited text file. I want to return a view and have browser save it as a file. If I was going to use a file instead of file, I guess I would have to create the file in memory and stream it to a file. This is so much easier done in a view. – under May 14 '18 at 08:51

How to let user download data to a file

2 Answers2