Download excel file from page via WebApi call

Question posted 2013 · +13 upvotes

I’m trying to send a 9MB .xls file as a response from web api controller method. The user will click a button on the page and this will trigger the download via the browser.

Here’s what I’ve got so far but it doesn’t work however it doesn’t throw any exceptions either.

[AcceptVerbs("GET")]
public HttpResponseMessage ExportXls()
{
    try
    {
        byte[] excelData = m_toolsService.ExportToExcelFile();

        HttpResponseMessage result = new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.OK);
        var stream = new MemoryStream(excelData);
        result.Content = new StreamContent(stream);
        result.Content.Headers.ContentType = new MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/octet-stream");
        result.Content.Headers.ContentDisposition = new ContentDispositionHeaderValue("attachment")
        {
            FileName = "Data.xls"
        };
        return result;
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        m_logger.ErrorException("Exception exporting as excel file: ", ex);
        return Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.InternalServerError);
    }
}

Here is the coffeescript/javascript jquery ajax call from a button click in the interface.

$.ajax(
    url: route
    dataType: 'json'
    type: 'GET'
    success: successCallback
    error: errorCallback 
    )

Now that I think about it perhaps the dataType is wrong and shouldn’t be json…