Downloading a .DAT file

Question

Am having a mental lapse here.
Using DW MX 2004 on XP
I need to create a link where a user (non computer literate)
can download a .DAT file to his.her desktop.
All i get is a "page cannot be found" error page
Does the file has to be a .exe or .zip file for it to open
the dialogue box to for user to save or open or am missing
something here?
any hints will be appreciated
Thks

Answer 1

This is as much a guess as a hint, but I figured that you may
be able to use
a "Force Download" script:
You don't mention what server language you're using... I use
ASP VBSCRIPT
and would use something like I've attempted to explain below:
First of all create a page called "error.asp" - the user will
be redirected
to this page if the download fails.
Then create a page called "forcedownload.asp" in the same
folder/directory
Copy and paste the following code to the forcedownload.asp
page:
=====>Begin
<% FileName = (Request.QueryString("FileName"))%>
<%
Response.Buffer=true
On Error Resume Next
'Create a stream object
Dim tfm_downloadStream
Set tfm_downloadStream = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Stream")
tfm_downloadStream.Type = 1
tfm_downloadStream.Open
tfm_downloadStream.LoadFromFile
Server.Mappath("../../changetofilepath/"&(FileName))
If Err.number = 0 Then
Response.Clear
Response.ContentType = "application/octet-stream"
Response.AddHeader "Content-Disposition", "attachment;
filename="&(FileName)
Response.AddHeader "Content-Transfer-Encoding","binary"
Response.BinaryWrite tfm_downloadStream.Read
tfm_downloadStream.Close
Set tfm_downloadStream = Nothing
Response.End()
Else
tfm_downloadStream.Close
Set tfm_downloadStream = Nothing
Response.Redirect("error.asp")
End If
%>
=====>End
(Make sure you change
"Server.Mappath("../../changetofilepath/"&(FileName))"
to reflect the correct file path to the .dat file)
Then link to forcedownload.asp including the filename in the
URL under the
variable "FileName".
For example, the link would read something like:
"forcedownload.asp?FileName=MyFile.dat" (of course you would
change "MyFile"
according to the correct filename)
I don't know if there's some "rule" that prevents .dat files
from working
with such a script... I've never tried it, but I do use a
script similar to
the sample above for a number of different file types to be
downloaded
across a range of different websites.
Regards
David
"ositogrande" <[email protected]> wrote in
message
news:[email protected]...
> Am having a mental lapse here.
> Using DW MX 2004 on XP
> I need to create a link where a user (non computer
literate) can download
> a
> .DAT file to his.her desktop.
> All i get is a "page cannot be found" error page
> Does the file has to be a .exe or .zip file for it to
open the dialogue
> box
> to for user to save or open or am missing something
here?
> any hints will be appreciated
> Thks
>