Efficient Streaming Methods

[Dale DeMott]

I'm looking for serveral ways to efficently stream files to my browser where I set the mime type. (*Not byte by byte but larger chunks) I want to stream PDF files as well as other files effienctly and haven't found a method that will work for me yet. Currently I'm doing it byte by byte and it takes a minute or two to bring up a pdf file. This simply is taking too long. Any and all solutions would be great.
-Dale

[Dale DeMott]

Well since no one here seems to really know.. I found a solution that works. I was really looking for a way of quickly streaming a pdf file so the file can get the files onto the customers screen quickly. Streaming the file byte by byte it took too long. Below is the solution for doing it in larger chuncks. I put in comments to help anyone else out there looking to do this.

public void dispatchPDF(String pdfFileToDispatch, HttpServletResponse response)
    throws FileNotFoundException, IOException {
    ServletOutputStream outStream = response.getOutputStream();
    //MIME type of pdf doc    
    response.setContentType("application/pdf");
    //
    //Using this header, you indecate that the content should be opened separately
    //(not actually in the browser) and that it should not be displayed automatically
    //but rather upon some further action by the user.
    //
    //uncommenting this will force the file to open outside of the browser
    //response.setHeader("Content-disposition", "attachment; filename=" + pdfFileToDispatch);
    
    //attachment - since we don't want to open it in the browser
    //but with Adobe Acrobat, and set the default file name to use.
    String fileURL = "http://localhost:8080/pdf/"+pdfFileToDispatch;
    URL url = new URL(fileURL);
    BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream(url.openStream());
    BufferedOutputStream bos = new BufferedOutputStream(outStream);
    byte[] buffer = new byte[2048];
    int bytesRead;
    //Simple read/write loop
    while (-1 != (bytesRead = bis.read(buffer, 0, buffer.length))) {
    bos.write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
    }
}

Regards,
Dale