Download pdf file using jquery ajax

Question

I want to download a pdf file for jquery ajax response. Ajax response contains pdf file data. I tried this solution. My code is given below but I always get a blank pdf.

$(document).on('click', '.download-ss-btn', function () {

    $.ajax({
        type: "POST",
        url: 'http://127.0.0.1:8080/utils/json/pdfGen',
        data: {
            data: JSON.stringify(jsonData)
        }

    }).done(function (data) {
        var blob = new Blob([data]);
        var link = document.createElement('a');
        link.href = window.URL.createObjectURL(blob);
        link.download = "Sample.pdf";
        link.click();
    });


});

Answer 1

jQuery has some issues loading binary data using AJAX requests, as it does not yet implement some HTML5 XHR v2 capabilities, see this enhancement request and this discussion

Given that, you have one of two solutions:

First solution, abandon JQuery and use XMLHTTPRequest

Go with the native HTMLHTTPRequest, here is the code to do what you need

  var req = new XMLHttpRequest();
  req.open("GET", "/file.pdf", true);
  req.responseType = "blob";

  req.onload = function (event) {
    var blob = req.response;
    console.log(blob.size);
    var link=document.createElement('a');
    link.href=window.URL.createObjectURL(blob);
    link.download="Dossier_" + new Date() + ".pdf";
    link.click();
  };

  req.send();

Second solution, use the jquery-ajax-native plugin

The plugin can be found here and can be used to the XHR V2 capabilities missing in JQuery, here is a sample code how to use it

$.ajax({
  dataType: 'native',
  url: "/file.pdf",
  xhrFields: {
    responseType: 'blob'
  },
  success: function(blob){
    console.log(blob.size);
      var link=document.createElement('a');
      link.href=window.URL.createObjectURL(blob);
      link.download="Dossier_" + new Date() + ".pdf";
      link.click();
  }
});

Answer 2

I am newbie and most of the code is from google search. I got my pdf download working with the code below (trial and error play). Thank you for code tips (xhrFields) above.

$.ajax({
            cache: false,
            type: 'POST',
            url: 'yourURL',
            contentType: false,
            processData: false,
            data: yourdata,
             //xhrFields is what did the trick to read the blob to pdf
            xhrFields: {
                responseType: 'blob'
            },
            success: function (response, status, xhr) {

                var filename = "";                   
                var disposition = xhr.getResponseHeader('Content-Disposition');

                 if (disposition) {
                    var filenameRegex = /filename[^;=\n]*=((['"]).*?\2|[^;\n]*)/;
                    var matches = filenameRegex.exec(disposition);
                    if (matches !== null && matches[1]) filename = matches[1].replace(/['"]/g, '');
                } 
                var linkelem = document.createElement('a');
                try {
                                           var blob = new Blob([response], { type: 'application/octet-stream' });                        

                    if (typeof window.navigator.msSaveBlob !== 'undefined') {
                        //   IE workaround for "HTML7007: One or more blob URLs were revoked by closing the blob for which they were created. These URLs will no longer resolve as the data backing the URL has been freed."
                        window.navigator.msSaveBlob(blob, filename);
                    } else {
                        var URL = window.URL || window.webkitURL;
                        var downloadUrl = URL.createObjectURL(blob);

                        if (filename) { 
                            // use HTML5 a[download] attribute to specify filename
                            var a = document.createElement("a");

                            // safari doesn't support this yet
                            if (typeof a.download === 'undefined') {
                                window.location = downloadUrl;
                            } else {
                                a.href = downloadUrl;
                                a.download = filename;
                                document.body.appendChild(a);
                                a.target = "_blank";
                                a.click();
                            }
                        } else {
                            window.location = downloadUrl;
                        }
                    }   

                } catch (ex) {
                    console.log(ex);
                } 
            }
        });

Answer 3

You can do this with html5 very easily:

var link = document.createElement('a');
link.href = "/WWW/test.pdf";
link.download = "file_" + new Date() + ".pdf";
link.click();
link.remove();