geez, don't know what happened to the format on post, it looked fine in my form! 

try this...

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Hi,

There’s probably an easy answer here, but it’s escaping me…

I’ve got a list of documents of unrestricted types (.txt, .doc, .pdf, could be anything) stored in a database – id, filename, desc, and data blob.  I’ve got a page that lists the documents.  I need to be able to “view” the document using the default application or a separate browser window whenever the user clicks on one of the documents.  Easy enough, right?

Since the documents are stored in a database, I’ve got an HTTPHandler that handles the incoming document requests, parses the query string for the doc id, and reads the database.  The doc list items are hyperlinks to a script function that does a “window.open()” passing in a url to the HTTPHandler with an appropriate query string.

Two things –
1) In the handler, is there a way to return the document in such a way that the browser will launch it (as opposed to presenting an “open/save” dialog) without setting the “Response.ContentType” to the appropriate MIME type?  Everything works fine if I hardcode “ContentType” for known types in my controlled dev environment, but I’m not going to have the MIME type available from the database and I’m trying to avoid a lookup based on file extension if possible.
2) In my controlled testing, when the browser launches a different default application for a document, say MS Word, I end up with this stranded empty browser window.  Is there a better way to launch a file from a page then my “window.open()” approach?

Thanks for any ideas/opinions!

Code:

ClientPage.aspx:
 function viewDocument(docID)
 {
      window.open("DocRetrieval.ashx?id=" + docID);
 }

Handler.ashx:
public class DocRetrieval : IHttpHandler, IRequiresSessionState
{
      public void ProcessRequest (HttpContext context)
      {
          context.Response.Clear();

           int dDocID = 0;
           string strDocID = context.Request["i"];
           if (strDocID != null && strDocID != String.Empty)
           {
               try
               {
                    dDocID = ConvertCore.ToInt32(strDocID);
    
                   docRec = … //  database read stuff here…

                   //  context.Response.ContentType = "application/msword";
                   context.Response.BinaryWrite(/* byte[] */ docRec.DocumentBody);
               }

               catch
               {
                      //  error handling 
               }
          }
     }
}