Opening Word/Excel Applications on Client Machine from Website

[Fergus Red]

What I mean by the above is, if I have a Java developed website, then if I press a link on a jsp page etc, then is it possible that this link could open an application on the Client machine who is accessing the website through their browser.
For example when I click on the link, Excel, or Word opens on the client machine (if it is installed).
I'm not sure if this is possible, but maybe it is as after all cookies etc can be created on a client machine from a website.
If this is possible then how is this possible, any info and examples would be great etc?

[Michael Morris]

If Word/Excel is installed on the client, then all you should have to do is set the MIME type of the returned document and the browser should take care of it. For Word the MIME type is application/msword, for Excel it is application/vnd.ms-excel.

[John Smith]

This question would probably be answered better in the JSP/Servlet forums, but yes, it's relatively straightforward. Essentially, it comes to setting the "content type" and "content disposition" info in the header. Something like this:

public String render(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse res)
{
   res.setContentType("application/vnd.ms-excel");
   String fileName = "ExportPlan.xls";
   String contentDisposition = "attachment;filename=" + fileName;
   res.setHeader("Content-Disposition", contentDisposition);
   try
   {
   String value = (String)getCsvDocument().getValue();
            OutputStream out = res.getOutputStream();
            out.write(value.getBytes());
   }
   ...
}

Eugene.
[ April 24, 2003: Message edited by: Eugene Kononov ]