Send generated excel on the web using HTTPReponse in dot.net

Problem:

You want to send a generated excel file as web response to the client.

Follow these steps:

1. Create your Excel object with you favorite library (We use the open-source NPOI)
2. Get a memoryStream from your object.
3. Get a byte array buffer from the stream.
4. Give this array over to the HTTPResponse object.
5. Finally clean up after you.

Here is the code :

public void SendExcel(HttpResponse response)
{
    try
    {
        // 1)
        HSSFWorkbook book = CreateExcelWorkbook();
        // 2)
        MemoryStream file = new MemoryStream();
        book.Write(file);

        response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel";
        response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", string.Format("attachment;filename=test.xls"));
        response.Clear();
        // 3) 4)
        response.BinaryWrite(WriteToStream(book).GetBuffer());
    }
    // 5)
    finally
    {
        response.Flush();
        response.Close();
    }
    response.End();
}