ASP to download file outside web space

[Funkstar]

I've not done any ASP or web development in a couple of years and a friend has asked me to knock together some simple pages. Most of it isn't a problem but he would like to be able to upload a new CV whenever he updates his (freelance writer/producer/director so updates it a lot). Uploading is fine, i've got that sorted thanke to a nice free script.

However, it needs to be uploaded outside of the public web space. How can i download this file? I've searched for scripts, but i'm not having much success, i only need it to download this file seamlessly from once page, everything i have found is for complicated download managers.

Anyone help me out with this? I can't imagine it would be a lot of code, although i could be wrong

thanks for any help you can give me.

[Shad]

Nice and easy if you're writing this in .NET

Just create a new IO stream against the file in its present location and send it to the page output stream. You could also play around with the header too, to change the file name and content disposition (type), etc. It's a well documented thing.

No more than about... 5 lines of code

Unless you're stuck with classic ASP.......

[Funkstar]

i *think* it is .net as there is a couple of .net folders in the webspace. however i have no idea how to do what you just said

I emailed the hosting provider and they said something similar, but again i have no idea how to go about it.

You are correct that you need a separate download.asp to do this. We do not provide code, but basically you would need to set the header
(Content-Type: image/gif, or whatever) and then output the binary contents of the file. More information on this is available on the many ASP coding sites.

We hope this e-mail was of use to you. If you require any further information or have further queries, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Best regards,

John
NetWeaver.com Limited

[TiG]

When you say file outside of the web space?, how are you accessing this file, is it on his machine or what?. i'm trying to understand what you are really asking for.

The reason you confuse me is that you keep refering to downloading.

TiG

[Shad]

I believe he means the files that need to be downloaded are above the root level of the website. So the program will need to load the contents of the file from its present location into a memory buffer (via an IO stream), and 'dump' it to the current page context's output stream.

As I said, it's quite a well documented thing particularly with .NET

[Funkstar]

Not had a chance to do anything with this tonight, i'll look into it tomorrow some more.

When you ftp into the account you have /data/ and /public_html/ inside public_html is what is normally accessable from the domain (eg. /public_html/page.asp is the same as www.domain.com/page.asp) public_html is not writable by the webservice, so when i upload files through a form on a web page, i have to upload it to /data/ which is writable by the web service but is outside the public web space. This is the same directory that any databases are stored.