Javascript – Response.Redirect Word Document Glitch

asp.netjavascriptms-wordresponse.redirect

I come a desperate and broken man….

I'm developing a corporate intranet / search engine application. When users open a document, my ASP.NET code records the action to the Windows Event log, and then issues a "Response.Redirect" (for security/audit).

Process is:
– User clicks LinkButton "Open document My Document.doc"
– Postback occurs
– Server side code records the user opening document action to SQL + Windows Event log
– Response.Redirect navigates to specified document

Works fine for everything except Word documents. EG, PDF, JPG is fine. Using Word 2007.

The code is:

Response.Redirect("http://intranet/wcm/mydocument.doc");

When I call this code, and an existing Word instance is open, Word just 'flashes' any documents that are already open in the task bar. When the user clicks the annoying flashing Word instance on the taskbar, it instantly opens the document it was supposed to. Arr!

WHY!? It's driving me nuts.

*****Sidenote:*
Internet Explorer ignores clientside javascript 'window.open' if a Word document is specified. So I can't use that.***

Best Answer

It appears as though the decision process is up to Microsoft Word after the document is downloaded. At that point it's hands off for the browser because its job is done. You might want to change the Mime Type of the download so Word/IE doesn't immediately recognize it, and the user is forced to save it to disk (and this might be more in line with how other browsers would handle it)....

Edit: Straight from Microsoft, info about how to force a download for a known mime type. If you choose this way, the Content-Disposition header will need to be programmatically set. You will need to customize the download process by replacing Response.Redirect with something else like an ASPX page that modifies its headers as desired for the download (esp. Content-Disposition) and then programmatically reads the file from disk and writes it to the Response output stream. Microsoft has many good code samples in its MSDN docs under the Write methods of the HttpResponse class; you will likely find one or a combination of them that fit.

Related Solutions

Response.Redirect with POST instead of Get

Doing this requires understanding how HTTP redirects work. When you use Response.Redirect(), you send a response (to the browser that made the request) with HTTP Status Code 302, which tells the browser where to go next. By definition, the browser will make that via a GET request, even if the original request was a POST.

Another option is to use HTTP Status Code 307, which specifies that the browser should make the redirect request in the same way as the original request, but to prompt the user with a security warning. To do that, you would write something like this:

public void PageLoad(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    // Process the post on your side   

    Response.Status = "307 Temporary Redirect";
    Response.AddHeader("Location", "http://example.com/page/to/post.to");
}

Unfortunately, this won't always work. Different browsers implement this differently, since it is not a common status code.

Alas, unlike the Opera and FireFox developers, the IE developers have never read the spec, and even the latest, most secure IE7 will redirect the POST request from domain A to domain B without any warnings or confirmation dialogs! Safari also acts in an interesting manner, while it does not raise a confirmation dialog and performs the redirect, it throws away the POST data, effectively changing 307 redirect into the more common 302.

So, as far as I know, the only way to implement something like this would be to use Javascript. There are two options I can think of off the top of my head:

Create the form and have its action attribute point to the third-party server. Then, add a click event to the submit button that first executes an AJAX request to your server with the data, and then allows the form to be submitted to the third-party server.
Create the form to post to your server. When the form is submitted, show the user a page that has a form in it with all of the data you want to pass on, all in hidden inputs. Just show a message like "Redirecting...". Then, add a javascript event to the page that submits the form to the third-party server.

Of the two, I would choose the second, for two reasons. First, it is more reliable than the first because Javascript is not required for it to work; for those who don't have it enabled, you can always make the submit button for the hidden form visible, and instruct them to press it if it takes more than 5 seconds. Second, you can decide what data gets transmitted to the third-party server; if you use just process the form as it goes by, you will be passing along all of the post data, which is not always what you want. Same for the 307 solution, assuming it worked for all of your users.

Hope this helps!

How to display code snippets in MS Word preserving format and syntax highlighting

Here is the best way, for me, to add code inside word:

Go to Insert tab, Text section, click Object button (it's on the right)
Choose OpenDocument Text which will open a new embedded word document
Copy and paste your code from Visual Studio / Eclipse inside this embedded word page
Save and close

Advantages

The result looks very nice. Here are the advantages of this method:

The code keeps its original layout and colors
The code is separated from the rest of the document, as if it was a picture or a chart
Spelling errors won't be highlighted in the code (this is cool !)

And it takes only few seconds.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Response.Redirect with POST instead of Get

How to display code snippets in MS Word preserving format and syntax highlighting

Advantages

Related Topic