How do you download a file from AWS S3 to a client's device?

Question

Have looked at all the tutorials on how to download files from S3 to local disk. I have followed all the solutions and what they do is download the file to the server and not to the client. The code I currently have is

app.get('/download_file', function(req, res) {
  var file = fs.createWriteStream('/Users/arthurlecalvez/Downloads/file.csv');
  file.on('close', function(){console.log('done'); });
  s3.getObject({ Bucket: 'data.pool.al14835', Key: req.query.filename }).on('error', function (err) {
   console.log(err);
   }).on('httpData', function (chunk) {
      file.write(chunk);
   }).on('httpDone', function () {
       file.end();
   }).send();

  res.send('success')

 })

How do I then send this to the client so that it is downloaded onto their device?

Answer 1

you can use SignedURL Like that

var params = {Bucket: bucketname , Key: keyfile , Expires: 3600 , ResponseContentDisposition :  `attachment; filename="filename.ext"` };
var url = s3.getSignedUrl('getObject', params);

the generated link will force download with the name filename.ext

Answer 2

S3 supports the ability to generate a pre-signed URL via the AWS Javascript API. Users can then GET this URL to download the S3 object to their local device.

See this question for a Node.js code sample.