How to display Excel, PDf files from Webservice on AEM pages

[Former Community Member]

Objective: The response of a webservice is an excel (a separate call for pdf) file. I need to show this file as a link on the aem-page, and whne users click the link, the browser opens (or downloads) the file. 

Use case: On the customer page, there is a section with links to Order History (Excel file), Invoice(PDF file), Products catalog(Excel file). Clicking on each link, makes a call to webservice and fetches the respective file.

Would appreciate any thoughts on how to achieve this.

[smacdonald2008]

Write an AEM service to handle the return value (which you say is a respective file). The have the service be able to serve the file as a download. We have a community artilce that shows you to dynamically create a ZIP file of assets retrieved from the DAM. Then the file is able to be downloaded. See this article: 

https://helpx.adobe.com/experience-manager/using/downloading-dam-assets.html

So what is common with your use case is setting up the service to let a file be downloaded.  In this use case - its a ZIP of assets. In your use case - it will be files returned from the J2EE server. 

[Former Community Member]

smacdonald2008 wrote...

Write an AEM service to handle the return value (which you say is a respective file). The have the service be able to serve the file as a download. We have a community artilce that shows you to dynamically create a ZIP file of assets retrieved from the DAM. Then the file is able to be downloaded. See this article: 

https://helpx.adobe.com/experience-manager/using/downloading-dam-assets.html

So what is common with your use case is setting up the service to let a file be downloaded.  In this use case - its a ZIP of assets. In your use case - it will be files returned from the J2EE server. 

Thanks.

So the flow would be as follows?

• In SlingServlet, call your webservice, get the response 
• Define a new helper-class, that takes in the response and write the file to AEM's content
• then back in SlingServlet, get the data/file from AEM's repository and send it to UI

[smacdonald2008]

Yes - like in the article - notice how we create the ZIP on the fly and it can be downloaded - it would be quite similar in that respect. 

[Former Community Member · Accepted solution]

With Scott's inputs, my solution with code snippets.

1. From the UI, submit the action to Sling Servlet

<form name="importFileForm" method="get" action="/services/getData"> <input type="submit" title="Submit" value="Submit" name="bttnAction"> </form>

2. Your Servlet class        
 

public class TTIGetServlet extends SlingAllMethodsServlet { @Override protected void doGet(SlingHttpServletRequest request,SlingHttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException,IOException { ... ... String serviceurl = <<< your webservice url>>> HttpClient httpclient = HttpClients.custom().build(); generateFile(serviceurl, httpclient, request, response); RequestDispatcher dispatcher = request.getRequestDispatcher("/content/ttii/en/importfiletest.html"); dispatcher.forward(request, response); } }

3. Generate File method that pops up the file download on browser

public static void generateFile(String serviceurl, HttpClient httpclient, SlingHttpServletRequest httpRequest, SlingHttpServletResponse httpResponse) throws ClientProtocolException, IOException { HttpResponse response; HttpGet httpGet = new HttpGet(serviceURL); // Makes the call to WebService response = httpclient.execute(httpGet); // CORE LOGIC if (response!=null) { ContentType contentType = ContentType.getOrDefault(response.getEntity()); String mimeType = contentType.getMimeType(); if (mimeType.equals(MIMETYPE_JSON)) { // Out of context here... } else { // SHOW THE FILE ServletOutputStream sos = httpResponse.getOutputStream(); httpResponse.setContentType("application/vnd.ms-excel"); httpResponse.setHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment;filename=test.xls"); BufferedHttpEntity buf = new BufferedHttpEntity(response.getEntity()); InputStream istream = buf.getContent(); sos.write(FileHelper.writeFiles(istream)); sos.flush(); } } }