Returning Multiple Files from MVC Action
June 24, 2014 by Anuraj
.Net ASP.Net ASP.Net MVC CodeProject
Today I faced an issue with ASP.Net MVC, I have to download multiple files as a compressed (zip) file. Initially I thought of using third party component like DotNetZip. Later I used ZipArchive class, which comes with .Net Framework 4.5.
And here is the controller action.
public ActionResult Download()
{
using (var memoryStream = new MemoryStream())
{
using (var ziparchive = new ZipArchive(memoryStream, ZipArchiveMode.Create, true))
{
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
var readmeEntry = ziparchive.CreateEntry(string.Format("File_{0}.txt", i));
using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(readmeEntry.Open()))
{
writer.WriteLine(string.Format("File_{0} - Contents", i));
}
}
ziparchive.CreateEntryFromFile(Server.MapPath("~/Files/file1.txt"), "file1.txt");
ziparchive.CreateEntryFromFile(Server.MapPath("~/Files/file2.txt"), "file2.txt");
ziparchive.CreateEntryFromFile(Server.MapPath("~/Files/file3.txt"), "file3.txt");
}
return File(memoryStream.ToArray(), "application/zip", "Attachments.zip");
}
}In this implementation I creating text file on the fly and I am reading and using existing files as well.
Note: Following namespaces are required.
using System.IO;
using System.IO.Compression;You may need to add reference of System.IO.Compression.FileSystem namespace explicitly, without this assembly reference visual studio will not recognize ZipArchive class.
Happy Coding :)
Copyright © 2025 Anuraj. Blog content licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY 2.5 | Unless otherwise stated or granted, code samples licensed under the MIT license. This is a personal blog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer. Powered by Jekyll. Hosted with ❤ by GitHub