Introduction

The <ISBINARY> tag allows you to define templates that generate binary pipeline output. This makes it possible, for example, to return PDF documents or image files as pipeline result.
In a template, the <ISBINARY> tag can only be combined with tags that affect the HTTP header, such as <ISCONTENT> and <ISCACHE> . All text content is ignored.

Syntax

<isbinary
(
file = "( {String} | {ISML expression} )" |
stream = "{ISML expression}" |
resource = "( {String} | {ISML expression} )" |
byte = "{ISML expression}"
)
[ downloadname = "( {String} | {ISML expression} )" ]
>

Example

The following sample reads the content from a pdf file and sends it as response:

<ISBINARY file="d:/foobar.pdf"/>

The next sample reads the content from an InputStream and sends it as response:

<ISBINARY stream="#aStreamObject#"/>

The next sample reads the content from a resource found in the classpath and sends it as response:

<ISBINARY resource="com/intershop/beehive/core/dbinit/internal/icon.gif"/>

Finally, the sample below sends a byte array as response, e.g. can be read from a persistent object (blob):

<ISBINARY bytes="#MyObject:bytes#"/>

Next, a complete ISML template example is shown. The template returns a PDF documents which is read from the file foobar.pdf. Note that the content is made cacheable.

<ISCONTENT type="application/pdf">
<ISCACHE type="relative" hour="24">
<ISBINARY file="D:/foobar.pdf"/>

If the optional "downloadname" attribute is set, a header like:

response.setHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=\""downloadname"\"");

is generated into the JSP code. The header is used to force the browser to display a file download dialog with the given download file name.

Typically, templates generating binary pipeline output are included in other templates. For example, assume the snippet above defines a template referenced by the interaction end node of the pipeline BinaryOutput-PDF. In a different template, you can then create a link to the document foobar.pdf by calling the pipeline as shown below:

<iscontent type = "text/html">
This is text
<a href="#URL(Action('BinaryOutput-PDF'))#">View the foobar.pdf file</a>
This is text

Attributes

One of the following attributes is required.

file

file = filename | ISML expression

Specifies a filename referencing a binary file, e.g. an image, to be read and sent as response.

stream

stream = ISML expression

Specifies a java.io.InputStream object to be read and sent as response.

resource

resource = string | ISML expression

Specifies a binary resource found in the classpath, e.g., com/intershop/beehive/core/dbinit/internal/icon.gif.

bytes

bytes = ISML expression

Specifies a bytes array (bytes) object containing binary content to be read and sent as response.