is it possible to realize a file download via a portlet?
via servlet the code would look something like this:
 response.setContentType ("text/plain");
 response.setHeader ("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=\"testfile.txt\"");
 ServletOutputStream op = response.getOutputStream ();
 InputStream in = new FileInputStream(p_dir+request.getParameter("p_file"));
 byte[] b = new byte[4 * 1024];
 int len = 0;
 while ((len = in.read(b)) != -1) {
 op.write(b, 0, len);
 }
 in.close();
 op.flush();
 op.close();
no, portlets always returned markup in an aggregated page. as you said you have to use a servlet and leverage PortletRequest.getContextPath() to provide an URI that targets the servlet that will provide the file download.