How to send a pdf file from Node/Express app to the browser

Question

In my Node/Express app I have the following code, which suppose to read a PDF document from a file, and send it to the browser:

var file = fs.createReadStream('./public/modules/datacollectors/output.pdf', 'binary'); var stat = fs.statSync('./public/modules/datacollectors/output.pdf'); res.setHeader('Content-Length', stat.size); res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'application/pdf'); res.setHeader('Content-Disposition', 'attachment; filename=quote.pdf'); res.pipe(file, 'binary'); res.end();  

I do not get any errors, but I do not get the file in my browser either. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

You have to pipe from Readable Stream to Writable stream not the other way around:

var file = fs.createReadStream('./public/modules/datacollectors/output.pdf'); var stat = fs.statSync('./public/modules/datacollectors/output.pdf'); res.setHeader('Content-Length', stat.size); res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'application/pdf'); res.setHeader('Content-Disposition', 'attachment; filename=quote.pdf'); file.pipe(res); 

Also you are setting encoding in wrong way, pass an object with encoding if needed.