PDF file issue on IE 7 and 8

Question

I have built a web application on jdeveloper 11.1.2. One of the pages has a pop up with a goButton on it.
The destination property points to a servlet along with parameters : eg: filedownloadmanager?#{viewScope.DocsForPepBean.constantDocumentKeyUrlParameterName}=#{viewScope.DocsForPepBean.documentFilePathFileName}
and the TargetFrame property is set to _blank.  So when you click on this button, a pdf file gets opened in a new window. This woks super fine on IE 9 /Firefox/ Chrome.
But the issue is with IE7 or 8. Both the browsers navigate to the correct URL,but fail to display the document. A blank screen comes up on these browser.
Please help me if you have any ideas.
Thanks,
Shai.

Answer 1

Hey Guys,
Thanks for your responses. I would really like to share my code and explain you more clearly about the problem.
When the goButton is clicked, a window opens up with the following url :
https://server.abc.com:4443/wssMember-ViewController-context-root/faces/memberFlow/filedownloadmanager?docKey=rJ3mK42nqMT8xwO1FCpt4M6_H6a8hvTLTQzl6XKmVhw
That means we are calling a servlet passing two parameters dockey and its value.
The servlet filedownloadmanager looks like this:
public class FileDownloadManager extends HttpServlet
  @SuppressWarnings("compatibility:1063162876298056414")
  private static final long serialVersionUID = 3554660117368615095L;
  public void init(ServletConfig config) throws ServletException
    super.init(config);
  public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request,
                    HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException,
                                                         IOException
    String filename = null;
    try
      filename =/document_folder/ + docKey
    } catch (Exception e)
    System.out.println("unencrypetd param -->" + filename + "<--");
    //set based on file type of doc passed in
    String fileExtension = filename.substring(filename.lastIndexOf('.'));
    if (fileExtension == "pdf")
      response.setContentType("application/pdf");
  //This code follows by other file extension types 
    ServletOutputStream out = response.getOutputStream(); //to write the data to the response
    File fileToDownload = new File(filename);
    if(!fileToDownload.exists())
      throw new RuntimeException("Error retrieving file to download.");
    FileInputStream inFileToDownload = new FileInputStream(fileToDownload); //to read file in
    byte [] inFileBuffer = new byte[1024]; //to read the data from the input stream
    int numberOfBytesRead; //track buffer
    while((numberOfBytesRead = inFileToDownload.read(inFileBuffer)) > 0)
      out.write(inFileBuffer, 0, numberOfBytesRead);
    out.close();
  public void doPost(HttpServletRequest request,
                     HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException,
                                                          IOException
    doGet(request,response);
}So code is programmed to set the content type and fileinputstream is used to read file and then writes it to the output stream.
Writing files to a temporary location and then redirecting the browser seems to be a good idea but its gonna take us quite some time. I was looking if there was an easy work around.
Thanks,
Shai.
Edited by: Shai on Mar 19, 2012 9:20 AM