How Can I Verify A Download Has Been Completed?

Question

We're using ASP.NET MVC and our action does this:

• pull records from DB
• mark records as downloaded
• push zipped download to browser

Now the problem comes when the download doesn't complete for some reason - maybe the user clicks "Cancel" or IE pops up that download security bar. I'm wondering if there's an alternative solution.

Could we push the download to the user and then only mark records as downloaded when we're sure they've received the right number of bytes? I have to say that I'm struggling with this one and a solution which is as easy for end users as possible would be fantastic.

Answer 1

I don't believe there is. If this is necessary you may need to utilize a Silverlight (Or flash) control in conjunction with your application.

Basically the approach with either one would be to open a socket connection to the HTTP url and save it to the appropriate path on the User's drive. Once the download is complete you could have the control generate a hash value from the file and send that back to some ASP page. If the hash value is never submitted or is incorrect you know they didn't finish the file.

Answer 2

Rather than simply redirecting the user to the resource that is to be downloaded (there by causing the popup of would you like to download a file) you might try to two things. Push the resource out of a page as a byte array. Once the download has completed redirect the download page to another page. On this page you can then add to your workflow asking if the download went ok or not. Also, if they got this far you could assume (ass-u-me) that it worked. To actually track how far the download got I don't think is doable as you have nothing on the other end monitoring bytes received.

Answer 3

Even checking that all the bytes were sent doesn't really guarantee anything:

• The user might still cancel the download before saving it, or their browser might crash, etc.
• The recipient might not be the user. It might be a proxy server with a virus scanner that decides to block the transfer, etc.

Answer 4

There isn't any reliable way to do this without a process running on the client which can verify the transfer completed. Of course, the only process we can reasonably expect the user to already have, or be willing to install, is Flash.

Only Flash 10 supports saving files directly to disk as the user requests. (Previous versions had a "shared object" which was kind of like a very large cookie space more than anything else - not for transferring files but saving reusable application data). Read up here for info on how to interact with the end-user's filesystem via Flash 10.

Essentially there is a method call save() which will push data to a location of the user's choosing. The specific location is hidden from your code; for obvious security reasons, you merely push the file into a black box and Flash handles the rest.

The only real bit of info missing here is how to get your file into the Flash player, but anyone with a little Flash experience should have no trouble figuring that out with a few minutes of research. Without Flash experience you should still have it working in under a day.