Download option from Tomcat

[Kalyan Anand]

I have a html where I used href to point pdfs... these pdfs are placed under webpplication folder in tomcat.

when the user clicks on this href link... the pdf content is shown in the browser with some junk chars.... all I want is when user clicks on the href... it should ask the user to save/open dialog.. the option which we generally see on any website in downloading pdfs.

any help ?

[Sagar Rohankar]

Try to stream PDF from Servlet.

[Ulf Dittmer]

The SimpleStream example in the http://faq.javaranch.com/java/CodeBarnServlets shows how to stream binary files from a servlet.

You'll also need to set the Content-Disposition header as an attachment with a file name; something like:
response.setHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=\"foobar.pdf\"");

[Tim Holloway]

Also, don't store writeable files (PDF or otherwise) in the web application folder. It can cost you significantly. Read-only files are fine, but if you upload files into the webapp directory, it won't always work and you may end up like I did and get zapped when someone upgrades the webapp and the data files are get erased.