Displaying Word Document from a Database

Question

Let me try to explain this.
I can upload and store a Word Document in an Oracle database
(BLOB column) but now I need to extract that Word document and
place a pointer to it on the Web. Can someone explain to me how
this is done?
I'm trying to do something like have an image displayed on
the Web and when you click on it the Word Document is opened.
Follow me on that? So, if there are 15 Word documents in the
database, then the web page would have 15 images all pointing to
each separate Word document.
Has anyone done this?

Answer 1

Don't take my word on this, but I think this should work;
I've done this in the past to send dynamically-generated CSV files
to the user, which is in a way (at least at the perspective of
what's being outputted to the user) the same thing.
First, obviously, you need to retrieve the Word document data
from the database. We'll say you put that in a variable called
'wordDoc'.
<cfset wordDoc = someQuery.wordDataObj />
Next, we need to set the 'Content-disposition' HTTP header,
to tell the client's browser that we're sending a file, and that we
want you to call it somefile.doc by default. We'll do this with the
<cfheader> tag (note that if you use <cfflush> in the
application, this tag (and thus, this approach)
will not work.
<cfheader name="Content-disposition" value="attachment;
filename=somefile.doc" />
Almost there. Now we need to set the Content-type HTTP
header, to tell the browser what kind of data is coming, and then
give it the actual file data. We'll use the <cfcontent> tag
to do both of these things.
<cfcontent type="application/msword"
reset="yes">#wordDoc#</cfcontent><cfabort>
If memory serves, this should be all you need. Note the
<cfabort> after the closing <cfcontent> tag, I've had
problems in the past with additional output on the page after these
tags being appended to what gets sent to the browser, so I use a
<cfabort> afterwards to make sure nothing more gets sent
after the data we want. Also, at least with CFMX7, I've noticed
that debugging output tends to get added in too regardless, so I
typically put a <cfsetting showdebugoutput="false" /> at the
top of the file, too.
I can't guarantee this will work, I haven't tested this
particular situation, but if it doesn't, it ought to be close. Let
me know if I'm wrong.
Attached is what should be the code without my commentary /
rambling interspersed.