I have a classic asp page which generates a PDF serves it to the browser. What I would like to do is have a loading page which loads the PDF in the background before serving it to the browser when this is complete, essentially adding a nice page indicating to the user that something is happening.
I have looked at things like the Yahoo progress bar but I didn’t see any way of then serving the pdf up.
Anybody have any suggestions? I'm sure this must have been done before.
I found a solution for this situation that uses iframes. It's not classic asp, but I don't see why it wouldn't work. Here's the article I found.
EDIT: added code.
Container page called by your application:
<head runat="server">
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
function BuildPDF() {
var iframe = document.createElement("iframe");
iframe.src = "BuildPDF.asp?" + <whatever args you need>;
iframe.style.display = "none";
document.body.appendChild(iframe);
}
function UpdateProgress(message) {
document.getElementById('txtStatus').value = message;
}
function SetDisplayFileName(fileName) {
var viewFrame = document.createElement("iframe");
viewFrame.id = "viewFrame";
viewFrame.src = "WhateverTheNameOfYourPDFViewASPPageAndArgs";
viewFrame.style.width = '100%';
viewFrame.style.height = document.documentElement.clientHeight - 20;
document.body.appendChild(viewFrame);
}
function ResizeFrame() {
var viewFrame = document.getElementById("viewFrame");
viewFrame.style.height = document.documentElement.clientHeight - 20;
}
</script>
</head>
<body onload="BuildPDF();" onresize="ResizeFrame();">
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<input type="text" id="txtStatus" style="width:80%; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: small; font-weight: bold;" readonly="readonly" />
<br />
</form>
</body>
Then, somewhere in your BuildPDF.asp, you have a function something like this that you can call anytime you want to update the status message:
function UpdateProgress(message)
Response.Write("<script>parent.UpdateProgress('" & message & "');</script>")
Response.Flush()
end function
The page you have referenced in the "viewFrame" is your page that streams the ContentType "application/pdf." Again, I did this in ASP.Net, but I see no reason why it wouldn't work in classic ASP.