WP8 - WebBrowser class : How to handle downloading of file? - windows-phone-8

Question

I have created a simple app in WP8 to display web pages using the Microsoft.Phone.Controls.WebBrowser class.
I am able to load the page, navigate links, move back and forward in history.
Apart from this basic functionality I also want to provide means to download files which cannot be displayed within the browser like say .ppt or .mp3.
I have not been able to find anything in the WebBrowser class documentation to initiate a download. There is just a Navigate function which takes a URL to load.
So can a download be done using WebBrowser class?

Answer 1

You'll have to intercept the navigation events and handle it on your own.
The following code sample should point you in the right direction. (You'll want to polish that up, I just put that together to show it can work with a random mp3 site that came up on Google when I searched for test mp3 files)
using Microsoft.Phone.Controls;
using System;
using System.IO;
using System.IO.IsolatedStorage;
using System.Net;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Windows;
namespace PhoneApp2
{
public partial class MainPage
{
public MainPage()
{
InitializeComponent();
MyWebBrowser.Navigate(new Uri("http://robtowns.com/music/"));
}
private async void MyWebBrowser_OnNavigating(object sender, NavigatingEventArgs e)
{
if (!e.Uri.AbsolutePath.EndsWith(".mp3")) return; //Find a more reliable way to detect mp3 files
e.Cancel = true; // Cancel the browser control navigation, and take over from here
MessageBox.Show("Now downloading an mp3 file");
var fileWebStream = await GetStream(e.Uri);
using(var isolatedStorage = IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForApplication())
{
var filePath = "downloadedfile.mp3";
var localFile = isolatedStorage.CreateFile(filePath);
await fileWebStream.CopyToAsync(localFile.AsOutputStream().AsStreamForWrite());
fileWebStream.Close();
MessageBox.Show("File saved as 'downloadedfile.mp3'");
}
}
public static Task<Stream> GetStream(Uri url)
{
var tcs = new TaskCompletionSource<Stream>();
var wc = new WebClient();
wc.OpenReadCompleted += (s, e) =>
{
if (e.Error != null) tcs.TrySetException(e.Error);
else if (e.Cancelled) tcs.TrySetCanceled();
else tcs.TrySetResult(e.Result);
};
wc.OpenReadAsync(url);
return tcs.Task;
}
}
}