How To Download File Using Javascript Ajax

When you use the ajax call in asp net mvc you just can return a json object but not a file if you want to do that you need to create and save the file in server and return it s path to ajax after that you can call a redirect link for download the file because this is a temp file so you should need to delete it after download.

How to download file using javascript ajax. Downloading files from ajax post requests occasionally i stumble upon the need to download files from post requests. When the link is clicked the browser detects that it is a file and allows the user to download it. Ajax file download with progress bar in pure javascript. Use the xmlhttprequest object to communicate with the server. When you use the ajax call in asp net mvc you can just return a json object but not a file.

In such cases when we need to use ajax to make a http post and then download a file the solution is to use a 2 pronged approach where we would first make the http post request and in the controller action we would store the file content in a memory stream. It doesn t need php. Instead window location or document location should be used. An example would be generating pdf files where the pdf content is dependent on the request. After that you can call a redirect link for downloading the file because this is a temp file so you should need to delete it after download.

It is easier to send ajax requests using javascript libraries or frameworks. If you want to do that you need to create and save the file in server and return its path to ajax. It helps show the content of the site and redirects the user after a few seconds. In this article we are going to show you a couple of tricks to generate and download directly a file using pure javascript. But it is also good to know how to send ajax request with plain javascript.

In this tutorial i show how you can send get and post ajax requests with javascript and handle the request with php. Currently most of the web applications show a normal link a href http download link for the users to download a file.