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I need to provide a file-download feature where the web server retrieves the file from another source (via HTTP) and simultaneously streams it to the browser. I am guessing that using MVC's Controller.File ActionResult will not work, but I wrote a prototype like this anyway:

public ActionResult Download()
{
    HttpWebRequest webRequest = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create("http://somewhere/somefile.pdf");
    HttpWebResponse webResponse = (HttpWebResponse)webRequest.GetResponse();
    Stream stream = webResponse.GetResponseStream();
    var mimeType = "application/pdf";
    var fileName = "somefile.pdf";
    return File(stream, mimeType, fileName);
}

This works fine, but there is no way to call Close() on the HttpWebResponse and Stream after the return statement. The help on the HttpWebResponse.GetResponseStream method says, "You must call either the Stream.Close or the HttpWebResponse.Close method to close the stream and release the connection for reuse. It is not necessary to call both Stream.Close and HttpWebResponse.Close, but doing so does not cause an error. Failure to close the stream will cause your application to run out of connections."

Should I create an HttpHandler and manually read bytes from the source stream and write them out to the response, along the lines of this or this? Is there another approach I'm not aware of?

Community
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ricb
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  • According to [this question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2129428/does-file-in-asp-net-mvc-close-the-stream), the framework will close the stream for you in this case. – Matthew Flaschen Oct 28 '11 at 23:06

1 Answers1

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While I'm not directly familiar with trying something like this, my first though was to do what you suggested in regards to reading in the stream, closing the connection, then returning the bytes as the response. Being a stream, I don't know how you can get around leaving it open for the sake of returning its contents as you do in your prototype, but then being able to close it when you're done.

Nate Kindrew
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