Force to open Save As popup open at text link click for PDF in HTML

Question

I have some big size PDF catalogs at my website  and I need to link these as download  When I googled  I found such a thing noted below  It should open the  Save As     popup at link click       lt head gt       lt meta name  content-disposition  content  inline  filename filename pdf  gt            But it doesn t work    When I link to a file as below  it just links to file and is trying to open the file        lt a href  filename pdf  title  Filie Name  gt File name lt  a gt      UPDATE  according to answers below    As I see there is no 100  reliable cross-browser solution for this  Probably the best way is using one of the web services listed below  and giving a download link      http   box net  http   droplr com  http   getcloudapp com

User · Answer

This is old post but here is the one my solution in JavaScript what using jQuery library.

<script>
(function($){
    var download = [];
    $('a.force-download, .force-download a').each(function(){
        // Collect info
        var $this = $(this),
            $href = $this.attr('href'),
            $split = $href.split('/'),
            $name = document.title.replace(/[\W_]/gi, '-').replace(/-{2,}/g, '-'); // get title and clean it for the URL

        // Get filename from URL
        if($split[($split.length-1)])
        {
            $tmp = $split[($split.length-1)];
            $tmp = $tmp.split('.');
            $name = $tmp[0].replace(/[\W_]/gi, '-').replace(/-{2,}/g, '-');
        }

        // If name already exists, put timestamp there
        if($.inArray($name, download) > -1)
        {
            $name = $name + '-' + Date.now().replace(/[\W]/gi, '-');
        }

        $(this).attr("download", $name);
        download.push($name);
    });
}(jQuery || window.jQuery))
</script>

You just need to use class force-download inside your <a> tag and will force download automaticaly. You also can add it to parent div and will pickup all links inside it.

Example:

<a href="/some/good/url/Post-Injection_Post-Surgery_Instructions.pdf" class="force-download" target="_blank">Download PDF</a>

This is great for WordPress and any other systems or custom websites.

User · Answer

Add a response header Content-Disposition attachment  followed by the file name  Remove the Meta Content-Disposition Inline  which will open the document in the same window  In java it is set as  response setHeader  Content-Disposition    attachment filename test jpg

User · Answer

Generally it happens  because some browsers settings or plug-ins directly open PDF in the same window like a simple web page   The following might help you  I have done it in PHP a few years back  But currently I m not working on that platform    lt  php     if  isset   GET  file                file     GET  file            if  file exists  file   amp  amp  is readable  file   amp  amp  preg match     pdf     file                 header  Content-type  application pdf                header  Content-Disposition  attachment  filename    file                  readfile  file                       else           header  HTTP 1 0 404 Not Found            echo   lt h1 gt Error 404  File Not Found   lt br   gt  lt em gt  file lt  em gt  lt  h1 gt            gt    Save the above as download php   Save this little snippet as a PHP file somewhere on your server and you can use it to make a file download in the browser  rather than display directly  If you want to serve files other than PDF  remove or edit line 5   You can use it like so   Add the following link to your HTML file    lt a href  download php file my pdf file pdf  gt Download the cool PDF  lt  a gt    Reference from  This blog

User · Answer

Meta tags are not a reliable way to achieve this result  Generally you shouldn t even do this - it should be left up to the user user agent to decide what do to with the content you provide  The user can always force their browser to download the file if they wish to   If you still want to force the browser to download the file  modify the HTTP headers directly  Here s a PHP code example    path    path to file pdf    filename    file pdf   header  Content-Transfer-Encoding  binary        For Gecko browsers mainly header  Last-Modified      gmdate  D  d M Y H i s   filemtime  path       GMT    header  Accept-Ranges  bytes        Allow support for download resume header  Content-Length      filesize  path        File size header  Content-Encoding  none    header  Content-Type  application pdf        Change the mime type if the file is not PDF header  Content-Disposition  attachment  filename      filename       Make the browser display the Save As dialog readfile  path       This is necessary in order to get it to actually download the file  otherwise it will be 0Kb   Note that this is just an extension to the HTTP protocol  some browsers might ignore it anyway

User · Answer

I found a very simple solution for Firefox  only works with a relative rather than a direct href   add type  application octet-stream     lt a href    file pdf  id  example  type  application octet-stream  gt Example lt  a gt

User · Answer

If you have a plugin within the browser which knows how to open a PDF file it will open directly  Like in case of images and HTML content   So the alternative approach is not to send your MIME type in the response  In this way the browser will never know which plugin should open it  Hence it will give you a Save Open dialog box

User · Answer

I had this same issue and found a solution that has worked great so far  You put the following code in your  htaccess file     lt FilesMatch      i pdf    gt    ForceType application octet-stream   Header set Content-Disposition attachment  lt  FilesMatch gt    It came from Force a File to Download Instead of Showing Up in the Browser

User · Answer

A really simple way to achieve this  without using external download sites or modifying headers etc  is to simply create a ZIP file with the PDF inside and link directly to the ZIP file   This will ALWAYS trigger the Save Open dialog  and it s still easy for people to double-click the PDF windows the program associated with  zip is launched   BTW great question  I was looking for an answer as well  since most browser-embedded PDF plugins take sooo long to display anything  and will often hang the browser whilst the PDF is loading

User · Answer

From an answer to Force a browser to save file as after clicking link    lt a href  path to file  download gt Click here to download lt  a gt

User · Answer

Try adding this line to your  htaccess file    x000D   x000D  AddType application octet-stream  pdf x000D   x000D   x000D    I hope it ll work as it is browser independent

User · Answer

Just put the below code in your  htaccess file   AddType application octet-stream  csv AddType application octet-stream  xls AddType application octet-stream  doc AddType application octet-stream  avi AddType application octet-stream  mpg AddType application octet-stream  mov AddType application octet-stream  pdf   Or you can also do trick by JavaScript  element setAttribute   download   whatever string you want

User · Answer

With large PDF files the browser hangs  In Mozilla  menu Tools   Options   Applications  then next to the content type Adobe Acrobat document  In the Action drop down  select Always ask   This did not work for me  so what worked was   Menu Tools    Add-ons   Adobe Acrobat  Adobe PDF plugin for Firefox    DISABLE  Now I am able to download e-books

User · Answer

A server-side solution is more compatible  until the  download  attribute is implemented in all the browsers   One Python example could be a custom HTTP request handler for a filestore  The links that point to the filestore are generated like this      http   www myfilestore com filestore 13 130787e71 download as desiredName pdf   Here is the code   class HTTPFilestoreHandler SimpleHTTPRequestHandler        def   init   self  fs path   args           self fs path   fs path                            Filestore path         SimpleHTTPRequestHandler   init   self   args       def send head self             Overwrite SimpleHTTPRequestHandler send head to force download name         path   self path         get index    path                 self log message  path   s    path          if   download as   in path              p parts   path split   download as                assert len p parts     2   Bad download link     path             path  download as   p parts         path   self translate path path           f   None         if os path isdir path               if not self path endswith                         Redirect browser - doing basically what Apache does                 self send response 301                  self send header  Location   self path                        self end headers                   return None             else                  return self list directory path          ctype   self guess type path          try              f   open path   rb           except IOError              self send error 404   File not found               return None         self send response 200          self send header  Content-type   ctype          fs   os fstat f fileno            self send header  Expires    0           self send header  Last-Modified   self date time string fs st mtime           self send header  Cache-Control    must-revalidate  post-check 0  pre-check 0           self send header  Content-Transfer-Encoding    binary           if download as              self send header  Content-Disposition    attachment  filename   s     download as          self send header  Content-Length   str fs 6            self send header  Connection    close           self end headers           return f   class HTTPFilestoreServer       def   init   self  fs path  server address           def handler  args               newHandler   HTTPFilestoreHandler fs path   args              newHandler protocol version    HTTP 1 0          self server   BaseHTTPServer HTTPServer server address  handler       def serve forever self   args           self server serve forever  args    def start server fs path  ip address  port       server address    ip address  port      httpd   HTTPFilestoreServer fs path  server address       sa   httpd server socket getsockname       print  Serving HTTP on   sa 0    port   sa 1             httpd serve forever

User · Answer

After the file name in the HTML code I add  forcedownload 1  This has been the simplest way for me to trigger a dialog box to save or download

User · Answer

I just had a very similar issue with the added problem that I needed to create download links to files inside a ZIP file   I first tried to create a temporary file  then provided a link to the temporary file  but I found that some browsers would just display the contents  a CSV Excel file  rather than offering to download  Eventually I found the solution by using a servlet  It works both on Tomcat and GlassFish  and I tried it on Internet nbsp Explorer nbsp 10 and Chrome   The servlet takes as input a full path name to the ZIP file  and the name of the file inside the zip that should be downloaded   Inside my JSP file I have a table displaying all the files inside the zip  with links that say  onclick  download zip  lt   zip  gt  amp csv  lt   csv  gt    The servlet code is in download java   package myServlet   import java io    import javax servlet    import javax servlet http    import java util zip    import java util        Extend HttpServlet class public class download extends HttpServlet        public void doGet HttpServletRequest request  HttpServletResponse response          throws ServletException  IOException               PrintWriter out   response getWriter       now we can write to the client          String filename   request getParameter  csv            String zipfile   request getParameter  zip             String aLine                response setContentType  application x-download            response setHeader   Content-Disposition    attachment  filename     filename      Force  save-as          ZipFile zip   new ZipFile zipfile           for  Enumeration e   zip entries    e hasMoreElements                   ZipEntry entry    ZipEntry  e nextElement                if entry toString   equals filename                     InputStream is   zip getInputStream entry                   BufferedReader br   new BufferedReader new InputStreamReader is   UTF-8    65536                   while   aLine   br readLine       null                        out println aLine                                     is close                    break                                    To compile on Tomcat you need the classpath to include tomcat lib servlet-api jar or on GlassFish  glassfish lib j2ee jar  But either one will work on both  You also need to set your servlet in web xml

User · Answer

A very easy way to do this  if you need to force download for a single link on your page  is to use the HTML5 download-attribute in the href-link   See  http   davidwalsh name download-attribute  with this you can rename the file that the user will download and at the same time it forces the download   There has been a debate whether this is good practice or not  but in my case I have an embedded viewer for a PDF file and the viewer does not offer a download link  so i have to provide one separately  Here I want to make sure the user does not get the PDF opened in the web browser  which would be confusing   This won t necessary open the save as-dialog  but will download the link straight to the preset download destination  And of course if you are doing a site for someone else  and need them to write in manually attributes to their links is probably a bad idea  but if there is way to get the attribute into the links  this can be a light solution

User · Answer

I just used this  but I don t know if it works across all browsers   It works in Firefox    lt a href  myfile pdf  download gt Click to Download lt  a gt

User · Answer

Use the download attribute  but take into account that it only works for files hosted in the same origin that your code  It means that users can only download files that are from the origin site  same host  Download with original filename   lt a href  quot file link quot  download target  quot  blank quot  gt Click here to download lt  a gt   Download with  some name  as filename   lt a href  quot file link quot  download  quot some name quot  target  quot  blank quot  gt Click here to download lt  a gt   Adding target  quot  blank quot  we will use a new Tab instead of the actual one  and also it will contribute to the proper behavior of the download attribute in some scenarios  It follows the same rules as same-origin policy  You can learn more about this policy on the MDN Web Doc same-origin policy page You can lern more about this download HTML5 attribute on the MDN Web Doc anchor s attributes page

[html] Force to open "Save As..." popup open at text link click for PDF in HTML

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