Re: Client download of file via res.download() not working

[Geoff Bell]

Guess you can't do download via ajax.  If I use a <form>, it works just fine.  Lesson learned!

On Thursday, March 7, 2013 12:30:40 PM UTC-5, Geoff Bell wrote:

I posted this question in the nodejs group, but realized that I should have posted it here.  Sorry for the cross posting.

I'm trying to add a download button to our site.  Clicking it initiates this ajax request:

$.ajax

  url: '/reports/get_file_from_json_service'

  data: { docId:window.DOCUMENT_ID, file_type:'pdf' }

  type: 'POST'

  success: (data, stat, xhr) => console.log 'download', stat

  error: (xhr, stat, err) => console.log 'download', stat, err

This hits some service that retrieves the current document from a data-store.  For testing in an offline environment, I've mocked an Express route and ends up here:

exports.getPDF = (req, res) ->

  date = new Date().getTime()

  console.log "Downloading document #{req.body.docId} of type #{req.body.file_type}"

  res.download 'mock_routes/report.pdf', "report#{date}.pdf", (err) ->

    if err

      console.log "something went wrong downloading report-#{date}.pdf", err

    else

      console.log 'success'

      exec 'touch mock_routes/report.pdf'

This appears to be working.  I get a success message from the server, and from the client.  I can see the PDF body using Chrome's Inspector.  However, the browser is not prompting me to save the PDF.  The response header looks like so:

1. Accept-Ranges:
   bytes
2. Cache-Control:
   public, max-age=0
3. Connection:
   keep-alive
4. Content-Disposition:
   attachment; filename="report1362670336342.pdf"
5. Content-Length:
   30042
6. Content-Type:
   application/pdf
7. Date:
   Thu, 07 Mar 2013 15:32:16 GMT
8. ETag:
   "30042-1362670171000"
9. Last-Modified:
   Thu, 07 Mar 2013 15:29:31 GMT
10. Vary:
    Accept-Encoding
11. X-Powered-By:
    Express

My understanding is that the Content-Disposition tells the browser to save the file, and suggest the filename "report{date}.pdf. This isn't happening though. Nothing happens. Any ideas why the browser is not prompting to Save As?

Thank you,

Geoff