Opening an Excel file already created - using ADF faces

Question

I have an action that exports a bunch of data to an excel file using jXLS, which seems to work nicely. However, the file is exported outside of my application context. I would like to open the file right into the file stream so that when they click on the link, it just opens the file directly in the browser or prompts for download.
Here's my action code. Any suggestions would greatly appreciated.
     public String selectForExcel() throws IOException {
     final String templateFileName = "../server/default/tmp/stats_template.xls";
     final String destFileName = "../server/default/tmp/chart_output.xls";
     Map beans = new HashMap();
beans.put("platformStats", deviceStats);
XLSTransformer transformer = new XLSTransformer();
transformer.transformXLS(templateFileName, beans, destFileName);
return "success";
     }

Answer 1

Add the following code to an action that returns null. The action will return the user to the current page and will be presented with a download prompt. This code should work well for your case.
Regards.
public static synchronized void downloadFile(String filename, String fileLocation, String mimeType,
FacesContext facesContext) {
ExternalContext context = facesContext.getExternalContext();
String path = context.getInitParameter("externalFiles") + fileLocation;
String fullFileName = path + filename;
File file = new File(fullFileName);
HttpServletResponse response = (HttpServletResponse) context.getResponse();
response.setHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment;filename=\"" + filename + "\"");
response.setContentLength((int) file.length());
response.setContentType(mimeType);
try {
FileInputStream in = new FileInputStream(file);
OutputStream out = response.getOutputStream();
// Copy the contents of the file to the output stream
byte[] buf = new byte[1024];
int count;
while ((count = in.read(buf)) >= 0) {
out.write(buf, 0, count);
in.close();
out.flush();
out.close();
facesContext.responseComplete();
} catch (IOException ex) {
System.out.println("Error in downloadFile: " + ex.getMessage());
ex.printStackTrace();
}