Rotativa Download with SaveAs dialog

Question

I am using Rotativa tool to display pdf. It works fine with the following code:

public ActionResult PreviewDocument()
{

     var htmlContent = Session["html"].ToString();
     var model = new PdfInfo { Content = htmlContent, Name = "PDF Doc" };
     return new ViewAsPdf(model);
}

I wanted to know the way to download the pdf via browser's "save as" dialog on clicking on a button and not to display in some iframe. "new ViewAsPdf(model)" just returns the pdf data.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can add additional attributes to the Rotativa call like this:

return new PartialViewAsPdf("PreviewDocument", pdfModel)
                   {
                       PageSize = Size.A4,
                       FileName = "PDF Doc.pdf"
                   };

And it'll create the file for you. :)

Answer 2

I finally got a way to do this.

Actually rotativa's method "return new ViewAsPdf(model)" returns HttpResponseStream. Where we can hardly do something. But we can modify/alter the response once the action get executed by using custom attribute. We can override OnResultExecuted() method of action filter.

Controller's action

[HttpGet]
[ActionDownload] //here a custom action filter added
public ActionResult DownloadDocument()
{   
    var htmlContent = "<h1>sachin Kumar</hi>";

    var model = new PdfInfo {FtContent = htmlContent, FtName = "Populate Form"};
    return new ViewAsPdf(model);
}

Custom Action filter:

public class ActionDownloadAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute
{
    public override void OnResultExecuted(ResultExecutedContext filterContext)
    {   
            //Add content-disposition header to response so that browser understand to download as an attachment.   
        filterContext.HttpContext.Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "attachment; filename=" + "Report.pdf"); 

            base.OnResultExecuted(filterContext);
    }
}

Answer 3

You can use return new ActionAsPdf. No custom attributes or anything else required. Example: https://github.com/webgio/Rotativa/

public ActionResult PrintPreviewDocument()
{
    return new ActionAsPdf("PreviewDocument") { FileName = "PDF Doc.pdf" };
}

public ActionResult PreviewDocument()
{

    var htmlContent = Session["html"].ToString();
    var model = new PdfInfo { Content = htmlContent, Name = "PDF Doc" };
    return View(model);
}