My ASP.NET Web Forms app generates a report, via a fairly complicated process: authentication, ViewState, and asynchronous retrieval of data.
I would like to give the user the option of downloading the report they are viewing as a PDF file. I'd prefer to convert the HTML to PDF, so the two cannot get out of sync due to incremental changes.
I can find .NET components which can point to a Url and generate PDF, but I'm not sure how this will work on my complex reports. Should I grab the Viewstate and Auth cookies from the user's request and pass them through the PDF generator? I could get all the settings into the Url if needed, eliminating ViewState.
Anyone have experience with this sort of setup? Suggested software?
you could save to disk and pass the HTML page you're sending to the client to a tool such as wkhtml2pdf (http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/) and use XHR to periodically check if the file was rendered, if so provide a download link.
Related
I would like to implement a functionality in an MVC3 web application which would allow users to edit Microsoft Office documents directly with WebDAV but unfortunately I have no clue where to start. I have to make links for the documents which, once clicked, would open the documents and after the user saved a document, it should be uploaded back to the server.
Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.
You would need probably some web browser plugin (ActiveX or Netscape API), which would handle this for you. You can pass the url of the document (with some authentication cookie) to that plugin on clicking of the link. The plugin than can download the file, open it using ShellExecute or similar (e.g.Launch services on mac) and on close of the file you can upload the file.
This is of course very basic usage and does not employ the strength of webDAV protocol. You should handle webdav locks for example or detect etags of the file before upload etc. to prevent some data loss. You would have to read more about webdav: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3744.txt.
I have an ASP.NET application with pages that use reportviewer. Can someone give me a hint on how to approach the following requirement:
I want to get the report as PDF file from the page, without user interaction. I know I can render the report to a filestream, but since there's no user opening it in a browser, I need to collect the filestream from another application that might run during the night.
There might be other approaches, like a webservice for example that could return the filestream to me, but this would also mean, I have to modify the setup of the datasources that the report receives it's data from. There are a lot of controls on the page, for supplying filter parameters. By using the page life cycle I can use what's already there.
I thought about wget, but haven't tried it yet, and I'm not sure how complicated logging in will be with cookies. I do have full control over the asp.net application though, so if I can modify something there to make it easier, I'd do it.
You can use the "WebClient" in .net application to get the response from the site.
Please refer the below link:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.webclient(v=vs.80).aspx
I have a web application which consists of many aspx pages ... one of them shows a grid with rows that can be exported to a file via button click. This works fine. Now I want to have that feature which allows a user to access an external link to this page (or another) and to export to a file and download. I dont need any information on the page, just the file download. How could I do this also including security features like encryption?
Thanks :)
The easiest way to do this is simply implement an HttpHandler that contains the logic to create that file and write it to the Response stream.
There are lots of examples of how to do this on the web that I won't repeat in this question. Just do a Google search for "Download File HttpHandler" and you should be golden.
One of the search results: http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/jhblankenship/DownloadingFromMemStreamHttp11262005061852AM/DownloadingFromMemStreamHttp.aspx
What you're going to have to do is when the gridview shows the correct rows to provide a 'unique link' which will be your website URL with url variables at the end. When the page loads it can check these variables and then use the database to look up the correct data etc.
Encryption in transit will be done via HTTPS (SSL), and to secure otherwise you would require a login to view the gridview / file.
Is there a way to share the session between ASP3 And ASP.NET?
Thanks
Despite all of Microsoft's best efforts to make ASP and ASP.NET coexist effortlessly, one area remains a stumbling block... session state. Fortunately the advantages of ASP.NET's upgraded session state management far outweigh the inconvenience of not being able to pass "Classic" session information to .NET. Unfortunately there is no simple solution; the most I can offer is an easy to implement workaround.
In trying to find a suitable resolution, I've come across two good options that are worth mentioning. The first involves parsing the session information out to hidden form fields on a "Classic" intermediate page and then submitting the page to a .NET intermediate page that loads the form fields into the session state. This is a good, simple solution, however it doesn't work both ways. In .NET you cannot specify the page that you submit to. Each page has to PostBack to itself.
The second option is probably closer to an actual solution than to a workaround. Billy Yuen at Microsoft has developed an effective solution. The code is elegant, the integration appears to be seamless, but I couldn't get it to work on my system (remember I said that there was no simple solution, not that there was no solution at all). If this solution works for you, great! You won't need my code and you'll be happily passing session information from "Classic" to .NET like it's going out of vogue, thanks for stopping by.
Ok, if you're still reading let me briefly describe the workaround I've created. It requires a database, but it is not important which type of database (though the code is written for SQL Server). When a page (source page) wants to redirect to another page (destination page) that uses a different version of ASP, it calls an intermediate page. The source intermediate page takes each session variable and adds it to the database along with a Globally Unique ID (GUID). Since "Classic" and .NET use different SessionID formats it is not possible to use SessionID, hence the use of a GUID. The source intermediate page then passes the GUID to the destination intermediate page through a Querystring variable. The destination intermediate page retrieves the session information from the database, cleans up after itself, and then redirects to the destination page. It's similar to the first workaround, but supports transferring state in both directions.
Code Usage
Installation
Run the SQL Query in "ASPSessionState.sql" on the database which will hold the temporary Session information.
Copy the .asp and .aspx.* (SessionTransfer.aspx and SessionTransfer.aspx.cs) files to a folder on your website.
Update connection object information in the "SessionTransfer.asp" and "SessionTransfer.aspx.cs" files. It is located in three places in each file (sorry about not consolidating the connection info).
Compile the aspx files.
The .asp and .aspx.* files must all reside in the same folder to work.
Usage
For use in a Hyperlink (Anchor Tag) or a Response.Redirect, set the destination URL to be one of the following:
From a ASP "Classic" page:
SessionTransfer.asp?dir=2aspx&url=<asp_dotnet_url>
From an ASP.NET page:
SessionTransfer.aspx?dir=2asp&url=<asp_classic_url>
The code will transfer the Session information and Redirect the user to the url specified by or .
Download
You can download the code from here: session_transfer.zip (4.6 KB).
Could take a look at NSession it allows sharing session state between Classic ASP and ASP.Net using State server. Pretty easy to setup just configure App to use State Server for session and register a couple of dll files.
I am building a Flex Application that calls a .aspx page on the same webserver which builds a PDF report using SQL Reporting Services. When the report is built it prompts the user to open or save the PDF.
We are trying to find a way to display a Progress Bar to let the user know that the report they requested is being built, and then destroy the Progress Bar once the report is finished being built.
I've tried opening a new window using JavaScript and trying to catch when the window closes, as well as trying XMLHTTPRequest, but nothing to seems to work.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
There are 2 options:
Use the FileReference class in Flex to programmatically invoke your aspx file. You will be able to track the progress of the call from within Flex by listening to its events. But the users can only save the PDF, not open it.
Have an intermediate HTML page that displays a loading icon and then refresh itself to your PDF generating ASPX page. Encode your aspx url along with parameters etc and set it as a parameter to this intermediate page so it knows what to load.
If you don't have control over the page to be able to put JavaScript on it to hit a URL (or call back to the parent/opener), then you might consider whipping up an aspx page of your own to host a ReportViewer control, and display the report inside of that. This would require you to create a .NET website with a page and a web.config - you wouldn't need to do more than make it receive any parameters your report needs, and it would be do-able via inline-to-the-aspx code as opposed to requiring in-depth .NET knowledge.
Or, you could hit the SS-RS API and render the report directly. Here, you'd craft a URL with parameters for the report on the SS-RS API site to accept. I think, though I don't know for sure, that the SS-RS UI uses the API itself behind the scenes. By default the API is hosted in a site called "reportserver" - you might sniff HTTP traffic while the report is being rendered to get you started with the URL that you'd need to hit.
Another option not mentioned here is to create a .Net webservice, add it to your flex project and when it hits the result handler you know the file is created at that point.