Download file with mvc is giving dick

Question

I did several searches on the net to find a way to generate a spreadsheet and save to disk.

As it comes to web, this can only be done via download, and all the examples searched (at least by me), I fall in the Fileresult. Turns out it’s not working.

I took a simple example and gives the same error. See the code

public FileResult Download()
{
    byte[] fileBytes = System.IO.File.ReadAllBytes(@"c:\folder\myfile.ext");
    string fileName = "myfile.ext";
    return File(fileBytes, System.Net.Mime.MediaTypeNames.Application.Octet, fileName);
}

On that line I get the error

return File(fileBytes, System.Net.Mime.MediaTypeNames.Application.Octet, fileName);

That is the mistake:

Non-invocable Member 'File' cannot be used like a method.

How do I fix this mistake?

Answer 1

The problem is that you are almost certainly using the class System.IO.File, which is static, so cannot be instantiated or returned.

Try changing the line

return File(fileBytes, System.Net.Mime.MediaTypeNames.Application.Octet, fileName);

To:

return System.Web.Mvc.File(fileBytes, System.Net.Mime.MediaTypeNames.Application.Octet, fileName);