Is this possible?

[Harry]

Firstly sorry for cross posting but not really sure which group this belongs
in?

Anyway, I have a webapp that basically consists of 2 screens, search critera
& results

I want to be able to provide a way for the user to download a zipped up
excel file of the results.

I can quite easily create a excel file using POI & zip it up using
java.util.zip which creates a zip file on the server. Then add a link to
this file on the results page which when clicked will produce the standard
download dialog box & alls well.

The problem is I have to create the zip file every time the results
generated & displayed but some users might not want this faclity!

Is it possible to have a button/link etc... that when clicked create's the
zip file & produces the download dialog box WITHOUT changing the results
page?

Any ideas?

thanks

harry

[Martin Honnen]

Re: Is this possible?



Harry wrote:
[color=blue]
> Firstly sorry for cross posting but not really sure which group this belongs
> in?
>
> Anyway, I have a webapp that basically consists of 2 screens, search critera
> & results
>
> I want to be able to provide a way for the user to download a zipped up
> excel file of the results.
>
> I can quite easily create a excel file using POI & zip it up using
> java.util.zip which creates a zip file on the server. Then add a link to
> this file on the results page which when clicked will produce the standard
> download dialog box & alls well.
>
> The problem is I have to create the zip file every time the results
> generated & displayed but some users might not want this faclity!
>
> Is it possible to have a button/link etc... that when clicked create's the
> zip file & produces the download dialog box WITHOUT changing the results
> page?
>
> Any ideas?[/color]

Assuming you are working with Servlets or JSP on the server you need to
find out how to set a HTTP response header with them and set a headers alike
Content-Type: application/octet-stream
Content-disposition: attachement; filename=whatev er.zip
and then stream the zip to the browser
--

Martin Honnen

http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/

[Andy Fish]

Re: Is this possible?

yes

simply have the download URL pointing to a servlet (or whatever server side
technology you are using)

in the servlet build the zip file, set the content-type to
application/x-zip-compressed and write out the zip data as the HTTP body.

note that you with java.util.zip, you can simply open up a zipOutputStream
on the response's output stream so you don't need to save it to a file at
all.

I would also suggest the url ends in .zip as well. Sometimes IE seems to
look at the file extension of the URL as well as the content type

Andy

"Harry" <a@abc.com> wrote in message
news:WWHub.4671 $nZ5.40432805@n ews-text.cableinet. net...[color=blue]
> Firstly sorry for cross posting but not really sure which group this[/color]
belongs[color=blue]
> in?
>
> Anyway, I have a webapp that basically consists of 2 screens, search[/color]
critera[color=blue]
> & results
>
> I want to be able to provide a way for the user to download a zipped up
> excel file of the results.
>
> I can quite easily create a excel file using POI & zip it up using
> java.util.zip which creates a zip file on the server. Then add a link to
> this file on the results page which when clicked will produce the standard
> download dialog box & alls well.
>
> The problem is I have to create the zip file every time the results
> generated & displayed but some users might not want this faclity!
>
> Is it possible to have a button/link etc... that when clicked create's the
> zip file & produces the download dialog box WITHOUT changing the results
> page?
>
> Any ideas?
>
> thanks
>
> harry
>
>[/color]